“Palliative Care is the term used to describe the care that is given when cure is not possible.  Palliative care is a proactive approach involving a multi-professional team.  As well as controlling pain and other distressing symptoms, it applies a holistic approach to meeting the physical, practical, functional, social, emotional and spiritual needs of patients and carers facing progressive illness and bereavement[1].”

Specialist palliative care becomes necessary when patients have more complex needs because of severe pain or other distressing symptoms which are proving difficult to control.  They will require specialist attention at Borders General Hospital, perhaps for a few days and perhaps on more than one occasion.  This care will enable many of these patients to remain at home for most of their illness and often to die at home if that is their wish.  Others will, of course, receive their end of life care as in-patients.

At present, in-patients with specialist palliative care needs receive their care in a standard ward setting within Borders General Hospital, alongside other patient groups.  We recognise that this environment could be greatly improved, and this project gives us the exciting opportunity to do just that.

The new in-patient specialist palliative care unit at the Borders General Hospital will have eight en-suite single bedrooms, each with their own view onto the Borders countryside, as well as overnight stay facilities for family members, treatment and therapy rooms, a day room and a landscaped garden and courtyard spaces. The aim is to create a comfortable, welcoming and peaceful building for everyone, which will benefit from a direct link to the main body of the hospital.

In recognition of the significant legacy left by Miss Margaret Kerr, a nurse who lived for many years in the Borders, the new unit will be named ‘The Margaret Kerr Unit’.

The project to build The Margaret Kerr Unit will be fully funded by charitable funds, and we are asking you to help us raise ‘the final million’ to make this wonderful unit a reality for the people of the Borders.