The impact of our Willen at Home service spreads far beyond the home.
We’ve been gathering testimonials from local healthcare professionals to show you why Willen at Home is so important for our local community and for our local healthcare system as a whole. Dr Tayo Kufeji, GP partner at Newport Pagnell Medical Centre and board member of the Milton Keynes Urgent Care Services provider, explains how our Willen at Home team ease the pressure on GPs by supporting patients with a life-limiting illness.
How do you work with our Willen at Home team?
“I’ve been a GP at this practice for about 18 years, and we’ve certainly felt the benefit of having the Willen at Home team. Someone from the team always attends our monthly review meetings where we discuss palliative and cancer patients who are becoming more unwell or whose symptoms have changed. On average, Willen at Home are actively working with about a dozen of those patients each month, seeing them in the community. The team give us updates and we give them updates from our side as well. So it’s a really, really good discussion. Overall I think it’s a very positive, synergistic relationship.”
Why do you think some patients choose to die at home?
“Following a palliative diagnosis, a lot of people feel that what they want is just to have the love and support of their family and to spend the time they have left with their loved ones. For that reason, being at home is much, much better than being in a hospital or any other setting. They know they’ve got limited time and they’ve accepted that, but they want to make sure the time they have left is quality time with the people they love.”
What would life be like for GPs without Willen at Home?
“I think life without Willen at Home would be really difficult for us as GPs. We know a lot of our patients want to be cared for at home and the challenge would be that sometimes they need daily visits. We wouldn’t be able to do that. The district nursing team could do visits but they already have very stretched workloads.
“The other thing that would be really time consuming and more challenging for GPs would be the medication. At the moment the Willen at Home team are experts in the kinds of medications we use for end-of-life and palliative care. The advice we get from them is invaluable. If GPs had to source all of that advice themselves, we’d be ringing hospital doctors or checking online. It would take so much time and it would be very disparate. It would cause delays for the patient, which is really not good for them in this particular phase of life. Whereas now we get everything in one place – Willen at Home do all of that for us. They recommend the medication and then they give us the notes behind it. It makes our job so much simpler and easier. And at the end of the day, it’s a much more effective system for the patient.
“If we had to spend more time visiting patients and doing medication adjustments in homes, it would mean less time in the surgery and fewer people we can see as GPs day-to-day. So it would impact on GP access and availability for other patients.”
What would life be like for patients and their families without Willen at Home?
“Without Willen at Home, families would probably not get support to look after their loved one at home in the same way they do now. A lot of patients would probably end up in hospital in accident and emergency departments or medical wards, which is really not the best place for them. There’s an awful lot of work that the Willen at Home team help us with, collectively as a community, in keeping those patients at home and keeping them comfortable and looked after.”
What other expertise does the Willen at Home team have that supports you as a GP and benefits patients?
“Willen at Home have some of those really challenging conversations that perhaps we as doctors don’t always do as well at. For example, talking about the patient’s preferred place of death, what they want to do about resuscitation and any benefits they might be entitled to. Some of those things we’re just not as conversant with, but the Willen at Home team are very good at all of that. They go through it with the patient and their family.
“The other real benefit of the Willen at Home team that I see, as a clinician, is when people get to the very end stage of life. The support from the Willen at Home team is fantastic in terms of when people need syringe drivers and medication adjustments. Again, there’s a lot of technical expertise in that sphere of treatment that some GPs might be familiar with, but a lot of GPs might not be. So the expertise we get from the team is really precious and invaluable.
“Everybody knows that GPs are pressured in terms of time these days, and we probably don’t spend the time the nurses and the Willen at Home team do with our patients. The very end of life can be really challenging and emotive for families, so having somebody from Willen at Home who can spend the time and explain what’s happening makes this a fantastic service to have.”
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