Fondazione Sanità e Ricerca provides palliative care to patients in an advanced stage of a chronic degenerative disease. The Palliative Care Centre was opened in 1998 and cares for 30 inpatients and 120 patients directly in their home. Located in the in the Monteverde neighbourhood, which falls under the competence of the Local Health Service, Roma 3, the centre is accredited by the Lazio Region Health System to provide care, free of charge, both in the hospice and in the patients’ home.
Dr. Italo Penco, Practice Manager
Multidisciplinary teams composed of palliative physicians, psychologists, nurses, physiotherapists, healthcare assistants, social assistants, volunteers, and spiritual assistants and care tailored to the needs of patients and their families enables the Centre to provide comprehensive, which includes management of the physical symptoms and emotions, psychological support for patients and their family and humanising the therapeutic impact, respecting their decisions, needs and rights as provided for by Law n° 38/2010, designed to ensure the right of access to palliative care and pain management.
Services
The centre provides all the necessary services to ensure comprehensive care for patients and their families.
The hospice is residential facility highly specialised in pain and symptom management. It is designed to ensure a safe and comfortable environment that protects privacy, emotional and relational wellbeing between patients and their families.
- Home Palliative Care Unit
A specialist palliative care team provides care in the patient’s home and ensures that the adverse symptoms (especially pain) are managed according to their Individual Care Plan.
- Outpatient Palliative Care and Pain Management Unit
The outpatients’ service is mainly offered to patients with chronic pain secondary to cancer, osteoarthritic and nervous system degeneration and peripheral vasculopathies. The outpatients department for Pain Management and Palliative Care represents a landmark for the protection patients’ right to relieve pain and distress.
Palliative Care
The WHO Definition of Palliative Care:
“Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. Palliative care:
- provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
- affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
- intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
- integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
- offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
- offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
- uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
- will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;
- is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications”.