Specialist Motor Neurone Disease Clinic at Bury Hospice

Bury Hospice is well known for providing care to patients with life-limiting illnesses and their families, by providing support and specialist services within the Hospice and in the community.

It is our mission to ensure that we are able to develop our services to continue meeting the needs of people with life-limiting illnesses across Bury and make sure excellent patient care is at the heart of everything we do.

We have recently extended our outreach service to seven days and are implementing a night respite service in the near future, which will initially be run as a pilot scheme and will ensure more people are being supported.

We are also extending our clinics in our Living Well Centre making it possible for people to access treatments closer to home.

As well as our Christie clinic, we have launched a Motor Neurone Disease (MND) clinic. We are excited to have partnered with our colleagues from Salford Royal Hospital (Northern Care Alliance) to provide this service for people in Bury who require specialist follow-up care. The clinic runs every third Tuesday between 1pm and 5pm.

Specialist MND clinics provide a place for people to meet with MND and palliative care consultants and specialist nurses for follow-up support, including symptoms management, advanced care planning, care reviews, discussions about MND and palliative care and advice on living well with the disease.

Rose Morris, MND Specialist Nurse said: “We hope that holding the clinic within this environment also provides an introduction to the services available within the hospice for support and symptom management”

Alison and her mum Susan who is living with MND both agree. Alison said, “The environment feels welcoming and calm and is closer for us to attend than Salford Royal – A much better option for us thank you.”

Dr Tim Jackson, Palliative Care Consultant and Dr John Ealing, MND Consultant recognised the need to make it easier for their patients to attend follow up sessions and this became a big reason for the work to bring the clinics out to the Greater Manchester community.

Dr Ealing said: “We are excited to start this new joint clinic at Bury Hospice. We hope this will offer better access to services for people living with MND and their families closer to home.”

Barbara, who lives with MND and who attended the clinic launch in Bury is pleased to have these clinics closer to home. She said: “Attending the clinic here is a million times easier for me than having to travel to Salford Royal, it was a 10-minute journey rather than a 3-hour ambulance.”

Bury Hospice is constantly evolving to meet demands and deliver our vision to ensure that it is sustainable and here to help patients and their loved ones for many years to come.

We are on such an exciting journey as we look ahead and continue developing our services and responding to the needs of the community.