When a child is hospitalized with a medically-complex, chronic, or life-threatening condition, a special kind of care is needed to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the child and family while minimizing the child’s suffering and enhancing quality of life.
Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children will soon have a coordinated program that encompasses all of these elements and brings together hospital, home and community. It will honor Tom Ferry’s three decades of service to the hospital and passionate advocacy for palliative care by being named The Thomas P. Ferry Program for Palliative Care.
More than treatment, palliative care is a philosophy that helps to fulfill our promise to children with medically complex, chronic, or life-threatening conditions. Palliative care provides an organized method to deliver curative or life-prolonging care as well as compassionate therapies intended to comfort and support the child and the significant people in the child’s life. Palliative care is truly family centered with guidance provided by caring professionals in both the hospital and the community.
The Palliative Care program will have its own medical director and include dedicated social work, advanced practice nursing and administrative staff in order to provide the best possible care for children and the families who love them. This important program will depend, in part, on generous philanthropic support from the community.
You may support The Thomas P. Ferry Program for Palliative Care and honor Tom Ferry’s extraordinary service to Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children with your gift to the Nemours Fund for Children’s Health. Contributions will help to enhance services to children with medically-complex, chronic, or life-threatening conditions and provide the support needed by their families and loved ones during a difficult time.