Breathing Space

Your space, your support

Breathing Space is a weekly outpatient clinic for people living with a terminal illness and experiencing breathlessness. The session offers practical exercises, advice and support to manage symptoms and improve quality of life.

Our approach is to tailor our support to you, understanding your personal experience of living with breathlessness and associated symptoms such as cough, fatigue and anxiety. Our aim is to offer support specifically to your needs, with the aim of helping you feel more in control of your symptoms. As part of this, we can adjust the pace of the service to suit you and shorten your appointments if they are too tiring.

We work as a multidisciplinary team which means that you will have access to a doctor, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, dietitian, and our Wellbeing Team. We may also discuss referring you on to other professionals that we think could help you.

The clinic is usually delivered over a series of weekly outpatient appointments. This allows you to access our different professionals as we find that this is the most effective way of helping breathlessness, and enables you to build on what we have done in the weeks before.

Location

Appointments will take place at Herriot Hospice@The Lambert in Thirsk. While regulatory authorisation is pending for our care services to be provided from the space, we will temporarily deliver sessions in patients’ homes. Home visits and telephone support may continue to be offered later, depending on your individual needs.

Bringing someone with you

We do recommend that, if possible, you bring a family member or carer with you to the clinic appointments, so that we can all work together.

Our other services

When attending our Breathing Space clinic, patients can also access further information about our wider services before and after appointments, from our Wellbeing Team and volunteers.