Referral information for Royal Trinity Hospice: information for clinicians

Download our referral form

Refer a patient to the Wandsworth Care Coordination Service

Refer someone to be matched with a Compassionate Neighbour

Royal Trinity Hospice supports patients with any progressive life-limiting illness. We provide specialist palliative and end of life care in patients’ own homes, in our inpatient unit in Clapham and for outpatients. We match people approaching the end of life due to age or illness with local volunteers to provide friendship and tackle isolation through Compassionate Neighbours.  

We will work with you to identify if an inpatient stay is required or if we can support people at home.   

Services and support we provide includes:  

• Management of symptoms e.g. pain, breathlessness, nausea, vomiting 
• Professional psychological, emotional, and spiritual support 
• An interdisciplinary team of specialists in palliative and end of life care who support people to live well. This includes a medical team, nursing team, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, dietetics, psychotherapy, social work, counselling, and pharmacy 
• Care for patients at end of life including supporting patients to die in their preferred place 
• Welfare rights advice and advocacy including for carers
• Advance care planning 
• Pre-bereavement and bereavement support for carers, family and friends including children  
• Supporting efficient discharge from hospital to a home setting with the involvement of our specialist community services and in Wandsworth, our end of life care coordination services.  

Please contact us if you feel we may be able to help. While we may not always be best-placed to help (e.g. we are not experts in chronic pain), we can give advice and signpost. 

Who can I refer? 

We welcome referrals for the following patients:  

• Adults with any life-limiting illness who are no longer receiving curative treatment. This includes cancer, neurological conditions, advanced dementia, respiratory disease, heart failure and other organ failure. We welcome referrals of patients at any stage after a diagnosis of a life-limiting illness and have a range of care and support options to suit a wide variation in need.
• People approaching the end of life due to age (over 85 years)  
• Patients living in our catchment or whose GP is in our catchment  
• We can accommodate the following needs for patients in need of palliative and end of life care on our inpatient unit:  
  • Patients on NIV. (We are not set up for 24-hour invasive ventilation but please contact us for discussions around withdrawal of ventilation).   
  • Patients with tracheostomy  
  • Patients on IV antibiotics and requiring IV treatment of hypercalcaemia and clinically assisted hydration  
  • Elective ascitic drainage  
  • Patients receiving enteral and parenteral feeding (in the case of parenteral feeding we will work with the patient’s home parenteral nutrition team)  
  • Patients who require blood transfusions  

Our inpatient unit is a place for the management of complex needs and support for those who are actively dying. It is not a long-term place of care. We may facilitate transfer of care to a more appropriate setting for a patient’s needs but we will work with you, the patient and those close to them to ensure they receive our care in the most appropriate place.   

How to refer 

Please ensure you specify which of the patient's needs you would like our help to address. This is the most important information in your referral.

Please be as detailed as possible to avoid requests for further information, ensuring you include clinical information to evidence the patient’s complex symptoms or deterioration, and the patient’s prognosis.  

Download our referral form

Refer a patient to the Wandsworth Care Coordination Service

Refer someone to be matched with a Compassionate Neighbour

If you are at all unsure whether your patient could benefit from our support, please call and talk to us.  

We welcome requests for advice and are happy to offer help with questions about referrals and what we can offer, as well as signposting to other services.  

Contact our Clinical Hub team

• Call our Clinical Hub team on 020 7787 1062 
• Email: [email protected] 
• Please note we no longer use fax and any faxes sent will not be received 

At what stage should I refer?

All the evidence suggests that the earlier people are referred for specialist palliative care, the better it is for them and their quality of life.  

Our catchment area

The teal/green area denotes our catchment for Community Services, Inpatient Care, and Living Well Outpatient care. The smaller purple area indicates our Inpatient Care and Living Well Outpatient care.