End of Life - NHS West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning GroupNHS West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group

What is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is defined by NICE as follows:

Palliative care is the active holistic care of patients with advanced progressive illness. Management of pain and other symptoms and provision of psychological, social and spiritual support is paramount. The goal of palliative care is achievement of the best quality of life for patients and their families. Many aspects of palliative care are also applicable earlier in the course of the illness in conjunction with other treatments.

Palliative care aims to:

Affirm life and regard dying as a normal process
Provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
Integrate the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
Offer a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
Offer a support system to help the family cope during the patient’s illness and in their own bereavement

The End of Life Programme

The End of Life (EoL) Programme aims to develop and improve palliative and end of life care services for all patients (regardless of diagnosis), enabling them to be cared for in their place of choice. Services will be supplied by trained and competent providers (specialist and generalist) who work collaboratively with other End of Life Care providers to deliver the best possible services for patients, families and carers.

Caring With Confidence – A free 5 session course aimed at Family Carers to improve their own situation and that of the person they care for. For more information please click here.

VOED Training – for more information please click here.

Specific intentions for 2013/14 include:

the delivery of timely, coordinated and consistent palliative and end of life care, including signposting to bereavement services
development of the means of identifying patients who have palliative and end of life care needs, supported by a relevant prognostic tool, in a timely manner particularly in hospitals and care homes. This will include providing multi-professional education and training, the use of End of Life tools and the use of the yellow folders.
DNACPR information will be communicated when patients are discharged, where applicable
development of a robust and dynamic system that enables information sharing across all agencies involved. There will be continued piloting and extension of the use of the Electronic Palliative Care Coordinating System / EoL register.
exploring the extension of Advanced Care Planning to patients resident in their own homes, to include educational content as raised by the current practitioner.

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