Are you:

Impacted by serious illness?

• Patient

• Family or friend

• Carer

• Community member

• Organisation

Finding yourself in any of the following scenarios?

• Recently diagnosed or living with a life-threatening or life-limiting illness

• Supporting or caring for someone with serious illness in your family or community

• Overwhelmed with information you’re not sure you fully understand

• Missing significant information that might help you know what to do

• Unclear about what management options you have

• Not sure whether to pursue particular treatments or not

• Providing a service that could be of benefit to people experiencing serious illness but not sure how to connect

• Wishing you had someone with medical expertise to explain things and help you make sense of all that’s going on

• Wishing a health professional had more time to sit and go through things with you in a way that you could understand

• Finding you have different opinions about what to do and not sure how to find a way forward that you can all accept

• Wanting to ask ‘tough questions’ about life and death but not sure how

• Wanting to explore what matters most to you or your loved one when things feel hard or hopeless

• Wanting to find hope or meaning amidst the challenges you’re facing
  

Wondering what a supportive care consultation is?

• An opportunity to sit down and work through any of the scenarios above at an individual or family/carer level.

• My medical background is in General Practice and Palliative Care, with further training in counselling and coaching, so I have knowledge and experience of caring for people with a wide range of serious illnesses in all age groups, in the community, at home, in residential care, and in hospitals. People often comment that health services are very disjointed, or seem very medically-focussed - my goal is to help put humanity at the centre, to help make sense of what is happening in light of who you are as a person first, and to ensure the focus is on what matters most to you.

• What I offer is supportive care coaching to complement the care that is being provided by other health professionals supporting you. In these consultations I am not diagnosing or treating you in the medical sense, but helping you to understand and find ways to meaningfully navigate the situation you find yourself in, or to achieve the goals you have in mind.

Wondering about education or facilitation?

• Perhaps you or someone in your community is experiencing serious illness and you’re not sure how best to ask for or offer support? What if you could have a doctor explain things in a common-sense practical way, answer all the questions people aren’t sure who to ask, and help you find ways to face things together?

• You may like me to provide reliable written information or tools to help you explain things to people, or you may want me to come and speak with a group in person or remotely.

• You may want someone with wide-ranging knowledge of the health sector to help join-the-dots between services and communities, or to support your organisation in taking a ‘Compassionate Communities’ approach to your own services.