End-of-life Care

Family Doctors West Auckland – Serving Community Needs

We are a friendly, community-based medical centre. Our vision is to provide quality, affordable health care and support for our West Auckland community during terminal or life-limiting illness.

What decisions do you need to make about care at the end of life?

Many of us will face many hard decisions as we near the end of life. Those decisions will include what kind of care we’d like to receive, where we’d like to receive care, and who will make decisions about our care should we not be able to make decisions ourselves.

What is Palliative Care?

Palliative care supports people who are dying and helps them to live as comfortably as possible. A palliative care approach aims to improve the quality of life for patients and their families, whanau and carers. End-of-life care works to lessen patient suffering through high-quality pain and symptom management, patient-centred care and support for patients or family members and friends.

McLaren Health offers support for health conditions that can’t be cured. End-of-life care can be provided during any part of a patient’s illness even though death may be years, months, weeks or days away. We work to support patients and their families as they plan for the future and work together with primary care physicians and specialists to create individualized care plans.

Palliative care does not try to cure an illness. As end-of-life care it looks at ways to make people more comfortable. For example, palliative care may include giving medicines to help with pain or help with problems from the side effects of treatments or anxiety.

At McLaren Health we believe in providing compassionate, excellent, accessible, palliative care for our patients. Our assistance is practical, physical, emotional and spiritual. We aim to reduce suffering and to make the most of each precious life so our patients can retain dignity and make their own choices.

Our doctors and nurses are skilled in palliative medicine and recognise that it in a privilege to be with patients and families during these important stages of life. If a patient wishes to pass away in their own homes, supported by family and loved ones, we work with families, whanau and carers to provide this. We work closely with all the Auckland Hospices, particularly West Auckland Hospice.

We are here to help in any way we can, so please contact us by email or phone if we are not already involved with your care. We care about quality of life, comfort and dignity at the end of life, and ongoing support for those who are grieving for their loved ones.

We’re committed to our community. We value cultural diversity and we strive to be sensitive to our patients’ cultural backgrounds.