You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Generating Research, Knowledge and Outcomes
P-65  Developing documentation for end-of-life care
  1. Joy Farquharson
  1. St Andrew’s Hospice, Airdrie, UK

Abstract

Following the recommendations of the Neuberger Report on the use of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) and subsequent guidance from Scottish Government (SG), we developed a means of recording, evidencing and auditing end-of-life care which met requirements of the SG’s four principles, as follows:

  • Informative, timely, sensitive communication

  • Significant decisions about a person’s care, including diagnosing dying, are made on the basis of multi-disciplinary discussion.

  • Each individual person’s physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs are recognised and addressed as far as is possible.

  • Consideration is given to the wellbeing of relatives or carers attending the person.

Thirteen key objectives were agreed in relation to evidencing and auditing appropriate end of life care. These were translated into an End of Life Care Record (EoLCR).

The project comprised two stages:

Stage One (5 week pilot)

  • Ward A: Patients identified as being in the last days/hours of life, care documented in EoLCR

  • Ward B: Patients identified as being in the last days/hours of life, care documented in Personal Care Records (PCR).

  • All data compared against the 13 objectives

  • Minor amendments were made and the EoLCR rolled out to all wards

Stage Two (Retrospective Audit)

A retrospective audit was undertaken of all deaths within the hospice over three months of implementation and compared against the 13 objectives.

We aimed to develop a robust means of evidencing end of life care which followed SG’s 4 principles. This relates to NHS Scotland’s 2020 vision that care will be provided to the highest standards of quality and safety, with the person being centre of all decisions.

The retrospective audit showed improvements in recording end of life care, please refer to Abstract P-65 Table 1 on page A34.

Figure
Figure

Abstract P-65 Table 1

Using the EoLCR allowed us to evidence the principles of good end-of-life care especially in relation to nutrition, hydration and communication with patients/families.

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work noncommercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2016-001245.89

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.