Article Text
Abstract
Background In line with St Oswald’s Hospice values we offer palliative care to patients with malignant and non-malignant conditions, aiming to serve our local population ensuring inclusivity and diversity reflective of the local demographic.
Hospice UK guidance ‘Equality in Hospice and End of Life Care: challenges and change’, identified groups excluded from high-quality end of life care, this formed the basis for this audit, aiming to examine how we record information and whether our patient demographic reflects our local population.
Methods Clinical notes of the last 100 adult inpatients were reviewed in relation to:
• Postcode; entered in to the Index of multiple deprivation (IMD), which provided a decile; 1 most and 10 least socially deprived.
• Primary diagnosis (widening access beyond patients with malignancy)
• Religion (Newcastle population; Christian (56.4%); no religion or none stated (34.6%); Muslim (6.3%), Hindu (1.1%), Buddhist (0.6%), Sikh (0.4%), Other (0.3%), Jewish (0.2%)
• Ethnicity (10.7% of Newcastle population are from BAME population)
Results Postcode of the patients home address; the data showed a spread across the deciles with a mean in the centre of 5th decile with 1st, 2nd and 10th deciles having greatest numbers. Primary diagnosis was malignant in 70% of patients and non-malignant in 30%
Religion 62% of patients were documented as having a religion, these were Christianity (57%), Hinduism (1%), Jewish (1%), Sikhism (2%) and others (1%).
Ethnicity 68% were White British, 6% were from a BAME background. 26% did not have an ethnicity recorded.
Conclusions St Oswald’s is providing increased access to non-malignant conditions including; neurological, respiratory and cardiac conditions. The patient population served appears diverse in relation to socioeconomic status. Some ethnic groups and religions remain underrepresented, this has provided areas to consider for our equality, diversity and inclusion steering group.