Hospice Palliative Care Service

Our Hospice Palliative Care Service provides compassionate, specialist support for people with life-limiting illness and their whānau. We focus on comfort, dignity, and quality of life - offering physical, emotional, spiritual and social care when it matters most.

Hospice Palliative Care

Palliative care helps adults and children with a life-limiting illness live their life as fully and comfortably as possible. Palliative care identifies and treats symptoms which may be physical (taha tinana), emotional (taha hinengaro) , spiritual (taha wairua), or social (taha whānau). Family/whānau and friends can also receive practical and emotional support.

Hospice Info Read Guides →

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Care & support when you need it most

Nurse Maude provides a range of specialist hospice palliative care services for those living in Canterbury. All services are free to patients and their families/whanau.

Referrals for specialist palliative care can be made by any health professional. Most patients have their palliative care needs met by primary providers such as district nursing teams and GPs. The Hospice Palliative Care team are specialist providers and are skilled at monitoring and supporting patients at home, in aged care facilities, or in the hospice inpatient unit, who may have more complex or challenging symptoms causing concern. The team always works alongside the district nurses, GPs, and other health professionals to provide the best possible care.

Patients and their families/whānau may self-refer for counselling.

Help us improve our service

If you would like to provide feedback on any aspect of the Hospice Palliative Care Service, please complete the short survey below. Your feedback is important to us and helps us to continually improve the service we provide to our patients and whānau. Thank you.

Feedback Survey

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Our position on the End of Life Choice Act 2019

We will follow our responsibility in accordance with the End of Life Choice Act 2019 if a patient wishes to explore assisted dying. We respect all views, and we will continue to provide the best care possible to patients and their whānau. However, our staff will not assess patients for eligibility, nor be present during the administration of any medication used in assisted dying, wherever that may take place. Assisted dying will not occur on hospice premises. We will continue to provide care and support up to the point of assisted death, and during bereavement.

Latest news

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Seven days, seven conversations: making it easier to talk about death and dying

9 September 2026

For dying matters, we've released the seven days, seven conversations podcast series. A podcast about helping people talk more openly about death, dying and palliative care.

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Suitcase Stories’ generous support for Nurse Maude Hospice

3 September 2026

A huge thank you to Chapter 1 and everyone involved in Suitcase Stories | Chapter1 , which culminated in the Runway Reveal event which was held on Sunday 30 August in the gallery. The event brought together Canterbury artists, supporters and the wider community around a very creative idea…transforming suitcases into unique works of art, with funds raised to support Nurse Maude Hospice and Koru Care Christchurch. Each artist was given a suitcase and invited to tell a story through art – there were 66 suitcases (most were vintage style) in total. The identity of the artists remained a mystery, so people have been purchasing the suitcases without knowing who had created them. Each suitcase is being sold for $500. The artists’ identities were revealed at Sunday’s event. The Runway Reveal was a great celebration of the project, with a group of young Koru Care recipients carrying the suitcases down the runway while wearing clothing they’d selected from our Nurse Maude op shops.

Aged care challenges need to be faced together

18 August 2026

Nurse Maude has welcomed A Place to Grow Old as an important opportunity to rethink how New Zealand supports people as they age; moving from separate services and settings towards care that is connected around the person. Nurse Maude CEO Louise Zacest says the report provides a clear description of the key challenges facing the aged care sector and provides direction and recommendations on what is needed to address these. “As the report itself notes, these aren't challenges for the future – they are already here. We welcome the recognition that significant reform is needed, and that we need to start this work now.”