The Mykolaiv Regional Hospital is unable to open a palliative care unit: there are no suitable premises
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- Alina KvitkoReporter
Mykolaiv Regional Clinical Hospital. Photo: the hospital’s Facebook page.Mykolaiv Regional Clinical Hospital is currently unable to set up an inpatient palliative care unit due to a lack of suitable premises. However, the possibility of establishing such a unit is currently under consideration, as palliative care should be accessible, particularly in regional healthcare facilities.
This was discussed during a meeting of the Mykolaiv Regional Council’s Commission on Medical Affairs, according to NikVesti.
As explained by Iryna Tkachenko, head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration’s Health Department, palliative care is mandatory for certain institutions, in particular the regional cancer centre and the regional children’s hospital.
«Palliative care is mandatory for the cancer centre — this is due to the status of the patients. It must also be provided at the regional children’s hospital, given that there are children with disabilities there, children who are sometimes on mechanical ventilation for long periods and have tracheostomies. In other words, there should also be a palliative care unit there,» said Iryna Tkachenko.
According to her, the issue of establishing a palliative care unit at the Mykolaiv Regional Clinical Hospital is currently being considered separately.
At the same time, Iryna Shabilianova, a member of the Mykolaiv Regional Council and head of Regional clinical hospital, explained that the hospital had already attempted to operate under the mobile palliative care package but had encountered problems.
She said that GPs often registered patients for this programme independently, meaning that patients were not referred to the regional hospital. However, specialists from the regional hospital were actually able to visit such patients.
«Despite the fact that the regional hospital did not make home visits, we had specialist staff working here, and the ambulance service did attend patients’ homes. We opted out of this programme due to inconsistencies in the regulations introduced,» said Iryna Shabilianova.
As for inpatient palliative care, she said the main problem for the regional hospital is the lack of available premises.
«At present, in the regional hospital — including our building — we are unable to set up a palliative care ward due to a lack of space. We have no suitable premises,» said Iryna Shabilianova.
She explained that the hospital has several sites, but all of them are already in use. In particular, it is not possible to set up an additional ward at the premises at 1 Kyivska Street. At another site, part of the inpatient block has been destroyed.
It should be recalled that a project for a capacity-based network of hospitals was presented in the Mykolaiv region, under which medical facilities will be categorised as super-cluster, cluster, general and community hospitals, depending on their capacity, population size and range of services.
