Overview
The palliative care team provides specialist palliative and end of life care to any patient living with serious or life-limiting illness (this includes patients with cancer and non-cancer diagnoses) and offers support to families and carers. We manage complex symptoms such as pain, nausea, breathing difficulties, and fatigue among others. We recognise that the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and practical worries can be as important as the physical problems, and we provide support with these aspects of care.

Palliative care can help in all stages of the illness, but it is particularly important to consider when curative treatment is no longer an option as it may help patients to live longer and more comfortably. It can be provided alongside medical care and other therapeutic treatments earlier in the stage of illness to achieve the best possible quality of life. For patients reaching the end of life, our aim is ensure that they die comfortably, with dignity, and with respect to their wishes and preferences.

Our service
Our team includes a medical consultant, a lead nurse palliative care, clinical nurse specialists, a social worker, and clinical psychologists. We are an advisory service and we cover all areas of the hospital, and Mary Seacole Nursing Home. All patients we see remain under the care of their referring medical or ward team. We work closely with other health and social care professionals including GPs, community nurses, hospital doctors, and other local hospitals and hospices to support our patients and those important to them.

Key clinical staff

Dr David Feuer

Dr Feuer is a Consultant in Palliative Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust and Homerton University NHS Foundation Trust.

He is lead for Specialist Palliative care at both Homerton and St Bartholomew’s with both organisations having had recent Care Quality Commission Reviews (CQC) with St Bartholomew’s being ‘outstanding’ for being well-led and ‘good’  in all other domains, and Homerton equally being ‘good’ with End of Life care.

He was the Lead Cancer Clinician at The Homerton University Hospital responsible for operational and strategic cancer management from 2000 to November 2019 and was active in the further development of Cancer Services within  North East London as part of the London Cancer Network and the  Vanguard Development and sat on the Vanguard board representing The Medical Director.
 

Dr Feuer trained in General Medicine & Palliative Medicine within North Thames. He was Senior Registrar & Research Fellow at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust from 1996-1998. He was appointed to his present post in July 2000. His major interests include pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of malignant intestinal obstruction. He also enjoys teaching, focusing on the need for critical appraisal of the literature. Dr Feuer has also published widely in the General Surgical, specialised Gynaecological Oncology, Oncology and Palliative Care literature with numerous presentations at National Speciality meetings.

Dr Feuer has given presentations at local, national & international meetings, and most notably as the only invited external expert speaker to a National Institute of Health  (NIH) meeting for ‘development of methodologies for prospective randomized end of life research with the utilisation of malignant bowel obstruction as a model’ in Los Angeles 2004. He also lectured at The City of Hope Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Centre, National Medical Centre, Duarte, California.

Nationally he has been advisor to two National Confidential Enquires into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) enquiries – Systemic Anti Cancer Study (2008), Caring to the End (2009);  Invited Clinical Advisor on the Mixing of Medicines Group on behalf of The National Prescribing Centre/Department of Health January 2010;  Member of the Independent Data Monitoring and Ethics Committee for COUGAR-02: Randomised phase III study of docetaxel vs. active symptom control in patients with relapsed oesophago-gastric adenocarcinoma; Invited independent reviewer for assessment of quality of complaints  - The Patients Association; Member of Steering Committee. The Management of pain in people with a past or current history of addiction Research team, National Addiction Centre. 

He is passionate about the need for adequate palliative care and pain relief for all patients at any stage of their illness.

Claude Chidiac

Claude Chidiac is the Lead Nurse for Palliative Care here. He is the founder and was the postgraduate programme director of palliative and end of life care at London South Bank University.

Claude has held a variety of academic and clinical roles in acute, hospice, and community settings. His current work focuses on improving palliative care provision for marginalised populations, with a specific emphasis on people with diverse sexual and gender identities. He was the principal investigator of a funded research project on developing and evaluating a training programme on culturally competent palliative and end of life care for LGBT people.

His PhD research explores the needs, preferences, and experiences of LGBT people with dementia, and their partners at the end of life. Claude has been involved in a number of consultations to support and provide expert advice to organisations about delivering affirmative palliative care for LGBT people in the UK and internationally.

Claude has published and presented at conferences in areas related to palliative and end of life care. His research interests are around end of life care for marginalised populations; sexuality and life-limiting illness; symptom management and needs of people with dementia at the end of life.


Claude is a member of several national and international professional organisations, and is an Executive Board Member at the Lebanese Medical Association for Sexual Health. 

Clinical Nurse Specialists

Anna Rodgerson - Clinical Nurse Specialist
Maria Otamendi - Clinical Nurse specialist
Judith Londe - Clinical Nurse Specialist

Outpatient clinic
We run an outpatient clinic once a week at the hospital. You will either receive an appointment letter that provides directions to the clinic or a telephone call with the relevant information. For queries about the outpatient clinic or your appointment, please contact the palliative care team on 020 8510 7819.

Referrals
Our referral criteria include patients with a serious or life-limiting illness who require support with:

  • pain and symptom management
  • psychosocial and spiritual needs
  • care at the end of life

Patients whose needs are addressed, and no longer require our input, will be discharged from our service.

To refer to our hospital team, please complete our palliative care  Palliative Care referral form in full, with relevant supporting documents.

Email this to huh-tr.palliativecare.homerton@nhs.net

Please note that this email account is monitored at intervals during working hours and days (Monday- Friday 9am-5pm). Referrals will be prioritised based on needs and urgency.  If your referral is urgent, please call the department on 0208 510 5555 and ask for bleep 819, 299 or 289. The information will only be secure when sent from the NHS.net email address.