What is happening elsewhere?
Within the United Kingdom National Service Frameworks have been developed for England Wales. In Scotland clinical guidance is provided via the Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network.
The Department of Health published their End of Life Care Strategy in July 2008. the document seeks to promote high qulaity care for all adults at the end of life.
Implementation of local end of life care
visions, supported by this strategy, will mean that patients and carers will have access to :
- The opportunity to discuss personla needs and preferences with supportive professionals
- Coordinated care and support, ensuring that your needs are met, irrespective of who is delivering the service
- Rapid specialist advice and clinical assessment
- High quality care and support during the last days of life
- Services which treat you with dignity and respect both before and after death
- Appropriate advice and support for your carers at every stage
Services will be :
- Well planned and coordinated
- Quality assured and delviered to a high standard
- Monitored and assessed to ensure quality
- Informed by the experience of others who have been in a similar experience.
The National End of Life Care Programme aims to support the implementation of the UK Department of Health's End of Life Care Strategy by sharing Local and National good practice.
Click (here) to view latest Newsletter from the National End of Life Care Programme
Examples of Good Practice include:
England and Wales collaboratively endorse the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance are necessary parts to a standards based system. They describe the level of service quality that needs to be achieved. They have a key role in supporting local improvements in service quality. Organisational and service performance will be assessed not just on how they achieve national targets but increasingly on whether they are delivering high quality standards across a range of areas including National Service Frameworks NSFs.
NB NICE Guidance published before 2006 are not directly applicable to Northern Ireland. However, they have an influence on all regions of the UK and those developed since 2006 do apply in Northern Ireland.
A Regional Welsh Palliative Care Planning Group Report was prepared for the Welsh Minister for Health in June 2008
A National plan to improve palliative care provision has been promised by the Scottish Government. The pledge follows the Audit Scotland Review of Palliative Care in Scotland.
- Review of Palliative Care in Scotland 2008
- Living and dying well: A national action plan for palliative and end of life care in Scotland 2008
The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) develops clinical guidance in order to standardise clinical practice across health care in Scotland.
Clinical Standards Board for Scotland have also issued:
The Report Palliative Care for All ( 2008) produced in collaboration between Health Service Executive and Irish Hospice Foundation , expands on the integration of palliative care into diseasemanagment frameworks
Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme in Ireland
In 2004 The Irish Hospice Foundation initiated a pilot project, in partnership with the emergent HSE at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, to examine how a comprehensive approach could be developed to change the culture of care and organisation regarding dying, death and bereavement in hospitals. This Project was one of three winners of the 2006 Public Service Excellence Awards selected to represent Ireland in Europe. The Atlantic Philanthropies supported the Foundation during 2006 in using the learning from the project to inform the planning and development of a national initiative and on May 12th 2007 President Mary McAleese formally launched the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme. In addition to partnerships and support from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the HSE the work of the programme is supported by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), The Dormant Accounts Fund and the Health Services National Partnership Forum.
Aims of the HFH Programme
- To develop comprehensive standards for all hospitals in relation to end-of-life care
- To develop the capacity of acute & community hospitals to meet and exceed these standards
- To change the overall culture in hospitals & residential facilities in relation to all aspects of dying, death and bereavement
- To achieve these aims the work of the programme is focused around four key themes: Integrated Care; Communications; Dignity & Design; Patient Autonomy
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