The Palliative Care Outreach Program was established in October 1997 by Dr. Margaret Farncombe, and received charitable status in October 1998. Our team of dedicated Doctors and Nurses provides care to our clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Despite the obvious need for palliative and end-of-life services in the community, palliative care receives little attention from the mainstream medical community, and even less from government-based funding sources. The Palliative Care Outreach Program does not receive any funding from federal, provincial or municipal sources, or from hospitals.
The Palliative Care Outreach Program provides an all-encompassing approach to the care and support of individual clients with terminal diseases, and to their families in an out-of-hospital setting to ensure an environment of comfort, respect, and dignity in accordance with the client's goals, needs, and belief system. As specialists in palliative care, we support not only the individual but also the individual's community who are sharing this end-of-life journey. We actively involve the individual, the family and other caregivers in the planning and delivery of client-based services.
As individual practitioners and as an organization, we believe that how an individual chooses to leave life is as important and valued as how an individual enters and passes through life. With our follow-up services, including bereavement counseling, our program provides a complete cycle of care. By caring for the whole person, the Palliative Care Outreach Program reaffirms what most clients need to know, especially during the critical end-of-life phase: 'that the client is worth the time, attention and effort to meet his/her self-defined needs'. Even in the face of imminent death, the client is valued and cherished as an individual, as a member of a family group, and as a member of the community-at-large.
Here are some stories on the Palliative Care Outreach Program and palliative care in Ottawa:
