Get in contact
15 Boswall Road
Edinburgh
EH5 3RW
Phone: 0131 551 1381
Email: echo@stcolumbashospice.org.uk
St Columba's Hospice Care
We are a local independent charity in Edinburgh that provides specialist care to people with life limiting illnesses and their families, at home, in the community and from our state-of-the-art hospice facility. Our values of respect, trust, partnership and care & compassion are central to all that we do and provide the bedrock for us to grow and thrive in a changing world. Our centre for education and research is vital to the palliative care we provide today and in the future. We work collaboratively with other organisations who are at the leading edge of caring for people where and when they need it most.
Why did we join ECHO?
We are passionate about providing skilled palliative and end of life care to the people and families we care for. We believe that people need skilled palliative care and family support wherever they live. The ECHO model allows our hospice team to support health and social care professionals in all community settings and widen access to palliative care knowledge.
Since adopting ECHO methodology to extend palliative care education and support into our communities, we have completed four Care Home ECHO Networks in and around Edinburgh and the Lothians, covering general Care Home topics and Anticipated Care Plan activities. We also ran two ECHO Networks covering palliative care issues for the Homeless.
In 2020/21, we ran four short networks with COVID-targeted themes, including End of Life Care Drugs and Care Home Support – these were received by staff and volunteers at Care Homes, colleagues at NHS Lothian and members of the Hospice Community and In-patient teams.
Additional Networks on general palliative care issues were run for NHS Lothian Volunteers and for the Hospice Community Team.
Since then we have run an Arts in Palliative Care ECHO Network to support UK art therapists and artists. A further ECHO Network was run in 2022/23 providing support and education to a hospice in Kazakhstan. Alongside this, a local ECHO Network was provided to District Nurse Teams in collaboration with our own Hospice and Community teams across Edinburgh and the Lothians.
Current and planned work
We are currently running a second ECHO Network to support Scotland-based arts therapists and arts practitioners working in palliative care.