Palliative care: your quality of life takes centre stage
October 29, 2025
5 min
A serious illness changes many things: your everyday life, the way you live together and your thoughts. At Zollikerberg Hospital, you are not alone in this challenging phase of your life. Our Palliative Care Competence Centre supports you and your family and loved ones with professional expertise, experience and humanity. Together, we support you in maintaining your quality of life day after day.
The person is holistically at the centre
Palliative care is not primarily about healing, but about alleviating suffering and shaping life. We take the time to understand and respond to your fears, needs, questions and wishes. We consider you and your relatives and carers as a unit of care.
We are guided by the SENS model, which enables us to provide holistic care:
- S for "symptom management" - we alleviate pain and discomfort.
- E for "decision-making" - we define goals and priorities together.
- N for "network" - we coordinate the network around the patient and connect the private environment with the specialists and services involved.
- S for "Support" - we clarify what support relatives and carers need and offer support in times of stress and beyond the end of life.
At the centre of our care is the person with all their dimensions: physical, mental, social and spiritual. We treat complaints such as pain, shortness of breath or fatigue as well as emotional and social stress and thus promote harmony of body, mind and soul until the end of life.
We are there for you across all disciplines
Our interprofessional team consists of specialists in medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, pastoral care and social and nutritional counselling. Together, we ensure that you feel you are in good hands - both medically and personally.
Since the beginning of 2017, Zollikerberg Hospital has held the "Quality in Palliative Care" certificate. This means that we have been audited by "qualitépalliative" and thus offer high-quality, interprofessional and holistic palliative care for people with chronic illnesses in accordance with defined structural and process criteria.
A place of peace and closeness
Our specialised palliative care ward offers you quiet single rooms with a view of the countryside. Your relatives are welcome around the clock and can also stay overnight if they wish. It is important to us that you can spend as much time together as possible.
In addition to our medical and nursing care, we offer you a wide range of supportive therapies. These include encounters with our therapy dog, phototherapy, music therapy and therapeutic laying on of hands. If required, you will also be accompanied by dedicated volunteers who give time, listen and are there for you.
All these offers have one goal: to strengthen your well-being, provide relief and enable moments of peace and security.
Finding ways together
Aspects, principles and goals of palliative care
Find out more about the principles of palliative care and how our team at Zollikerberg Hospital strengthens, accompanies and supports you and your family and loved ones. You can also discover the special features and services of our specialised palliative care unit.
Advance planning and follow-up care
Advance health planning is an important part of our work. In confidential discussions, we support you in making medical decisions at an early stage that are in line with your personal wishes. This ensures that care is provided in your best interests even if you lack the capacity for judgement. In this way, we create security for you and your family and loved ones.
Our specialised palliative care ward is not designed for long-term care. As a rule, you will stay with us for a maximum of three weeks, as long as our assessment based on professional indications requires. However, our commitment does not end when you are discharged: we work with you to plan your return home or transition to another facility. We work closely with general practitioners, Spitex, mobile palliative care services and specialists in long-term institutions.
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