End of Life Care Planning in Nursing/Care Homes
Funded by Salford PCT and the Burdett Trust for Nursing a collaborative of NHS, University and Nursing Home partners is developing education and practice and evaluating models of end of life care in Salford Nursing Homes.
Project Team
- Professor Martin Johnson, Dr Ian Jones and Dr Tracey Williamson from Salford University
- Dr Moira Attree, Manchester University
- Kim Wrigley, End of Life Care Lead for Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network
- Robin Gene Commissioner for Salford Primary Care Trust End of Life Care
- Bill Strettle, Public and Patient Involvement facilitator
- Steve Ingle Nurse Consultant and Dr Stephanie Gomm Consultant in Palliative Medicine all at Salford Royal’s Foundation NHS Trust
- Marie Busuttil, End of Life Care Education Facilitator at Salford PCT.
Project outline
The work has several aspects and is scheduled to run over the period April 2008 to September 2010 in the first instance.
First, we have run three very successful annual conferences at Salford University in the areas of End of Life Care planning. The most recent of these included excellent presentations from Steve Ingle on local initiatives and Kim Wrigley on National and Regional Strategy for this type of care.
These were followed by detailed discussions of research which has been undertaken into developing end of life care in nursing and care homes by Sue Ashton of Liverpool John Moores University, Fran Badger of Birmingham University and a highly motivating talk by Nurse Consultant Dr Jo Hockley of St Christophers’ Hospice in London on helping care staff learn in collaborative groups. Dr Stepanie Gomm rounded the day off summarizing group work in which professionals and care staff met with relatives from one of the nursing homes we are working with.
The team has undertaken a survey of nursing/care home staff at two large homes focusing on their confidence in using the end of life planning process, and are currently doing fieldwork, essentially participation in the homes and interviews of both staff, relatives and residents.
This work is demanding, but genuinely exciting as we get behind the paperwork to see how staff, residents and others cope with dealing with this challenging area of work. Our study also involves the development and testing of a method for assessing resident or relative involvement in care planning for the end of life. This presents perhaps the greatest challenge given the frailty and potential vulnerability of this client group. We believe the work will help improve curricula and enable better practice development in other homes.
Recent outputs
Jones, I., Attree, M. Johnson, M. (2009), 'Evaluating Gold Standards Framework Implementation in Salford Nursing Home's. Royal College of Nursing, Nursing Older People Conference, April, University of Salford.
Attree, M., Johnson. M., Jones, I. (2009), 'End of Life Care: Where are we up to? Nurse Education Tomorrow Conference'. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
