Our specialist team

Our nursing team is made up of staff nurses, Specialist Nurses and Healthcare Assistants. Our staff nurses’ focus on providing quality care to each person and understand how much ‘the details’ matter. Specialist nurses, with a high level of experience and training, guide your plan of care and can represent your values and decisions to other service providers and healthcare workers. Healthcare Assistants help you with bathing, grooming, dressing and at mealtimes.

Our physiotherapists are committed to helping patients maximise movement potential and enhance quality of life. This is achieved by managing physical challenges such as pain, muscle weakness and deconditioning, breathlessness, lymphoedema and fatigue, caused by illness and the treatment of illness. We provide an individual assessment to determine what each patient’s specific needs are and develop a treatment plan based on the outcome of this assessment. The physiotherapist works closely with each patient, using physical approaches such as therapeutic exercise (gym-based and hydrotherapy), mobilisation techniques as well as electrotherapy modalities (such as Transcutaneous Electrical Stimulation – TENS), to help that person achieve their identified movement and functional goals.

Services are delivered to in patients on all three sites and to outpatients in Harold’s Cross and Blackrock Hospices. Patients in the latter two sites also have access to the aquatic physiotherapy service.

Dietitian’s diagnose and treat dietary and nutritional problems for people. These problems may include:

• having a reduced appetite
• feeling full quickly
• losing weight without trying to
• having a change in your ability to swallow food and drinks
• a change in your taste

These problems can cause you and your family anxiety and worry.

The dietitian can help, by offering you and your family counselling and support on dietary problems. They will provide you with advice and support with nutritional supplements and artificial nutrition (being fed via a tube or intravenously). They will give you the most up to date and evidence based information and will make sure the nutrition treatment plan is tailormade to fit your needs.

Communication and swallowing are the most basic of human needs. Some life-limiting illnesses can affect your ability to speak, understand, and/or swallow safely. Changes in these functions can impact your quality of life by reducing your ability to make your needs known, savour your meals or swallow your medicines.

SLTs work with your speech, voice, language, and often alternative or assistive methods for communicating (AAC), including electronic devices. Working with you and the multidisciplinary team, SLTs provide individual communication strategies to help you remain engaged with the people you love, and your carers; make choices for your daily living; and participate in planning your medical care.

SLTs assess your safety, comfort and enjoyment of eating, drinking and swallowing. We provide swallowing education and therapy to you and your carers. This may include environment, and/or diet texture alterations, to help you to safely and comfortably manage the foods and drinks you like.

SLTs help you to understand and adapt to changes in your communication and swallowing and give you strategies to maintain quality of life, so you can continue to participate in your social and care preferences, as your disease progresses.

Through the use of holistic body and mind therapies, such as massage, reflexology and aromatherapy, patients and residents can experience physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual comfort, thereby enhancing their quality of life. These therapies are person-centered and patients / residents can participate in whatever way they feel best suits their needs and goals.

The Patient Services Department comprises:

• Admissions office
• Clinical administration support staff
• Medical secretarial staff
• Ward clerks
• Healthcare Records Department

The Patient Services administration team work together to provide an efficient and high-quality service to patients attending our palliative care services.

Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services is extremely privileged to have the wonderful support of almost 400 volunteers across our three sites of Harold’s Cross, Blackrock and Wicklow. Our team of volunteers are engaged in all areas of the organisation and without this support we would not be able to provide the range of services that we offer to our patients, residents and their families and loved ones. Our Volunteers help in several areas of patient care including transport, helping at mealtimes, distributing refreshments and providing companionship. Our Volunteers also support in our Fundraising Department and in our Bereavement Service.