Referral information for Royal Trinity Hospice: information for clinicians   

Royal Trinity Hospice supports patients with any progressive life-limiting illness, providing specialist palliative and end of life care in patients’ own homes, in our inpatient unit in Clapham and for outpatients.   

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

The support we provide includes:  

• Management of symptoms e.g. pain, breathlessness, nausea, vomiting 
• Expert psychological, emotional, and spiritual support 
• Access to an interdisciplinary team of specialists in palliative and end of life care who support people to live well, including a medical team, nursing team, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychotherapists, social workers, counsellors, and pharmacy 
• Care for patients at end of life including supporting patients to die in their preferred place 
• Welfare rights advice and advocacy 
• Advance care planning 
• Pre-bereavement and bereavement support for those close to them, including children  
• Supporting efficient discharge from hospital to a home setting with the support and 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? 

The following is a list of inclusions for referral:  

• 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.  
• 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 specialist 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

If you are at all unsure whether your patient could benefit from our expertise, 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 Admissions and Referrals team

• Call our Admissions and Referrals team on 020 7787 1065 
• Referrals 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