Brand New Medical Equipment For Hospice Patients

In palliative care we often use devices called syringe drivers which can make an enormous difference in maintaining comfort and pain control for patients and,at the beginning of August, St Catherine’s Hospice was able to replace all of its 16 syringe drivers with a greatly improved model.
For a variety of reasons, swallowing medication can be difficult for some patients. For example, expecting a patient to swallow anti-sickness tablets when they can’t keep them down is pointless. Similarly, those who are feeling very weak and weary can struggle to take many tablets and liquids.Syringe driversgently and continuously deliver medication, by injection, over a 24-hour period. The great advantage of this is that it eliminates the ‘peaks and troughs’ associated with taking medication at intervals during the day, then not during the night without being disturbed.
We worked closely with both the local hospital and community staff in choosing the best model for use across all the services within the Central Lancashire area. We continue to work together to provide adequate training and protocols to ensure the best service to those patients for whom the device can make such an enormous difference to the quality of their life.
The new devices also offer even greater safety– mainly because the new syringe drivers are programmed to do the calculation work. Once programmed and set up, they are secured in a locked box and the key panel locked to avoid tamper or accidental interruption.
The syringe drivers at the Hospice have served patients well. However, as with all medical equipment, they became outdated and it was necessary to replace them. In addition to this, an instruction from the safety department in the NHS earlier this year required that an updated model replace all syringe drivers within the next five years right across theUK.

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