Case study:

31 August 2007

Using a joint organisation approach to facilitate the implementation of end of life tools in Cheshire Hospices Education

Key points

Cheshire Hospices Education (CHE), a specialist palliative care education centre, is working jointly with the local PCT to help implement end of life tools in a range of care settings within the Cheshire area.

The facilitation programme aims to increase the use of all end of life tools by a minimum of 50% and to match or exceed the national figures for use in primary care, acute trusts and care homes.

At the same time it offers staff accredited and non-accredited education programmes as well as providing additional needs-led education sessions as and when required.

The project has focused on three separate sub-groups representative of three care settings – acute, primary care and care homes.

Each sub-group has formed a working party with a CHE lead.

The overall aims are to give practices across Central Cheshire PCT the opportunity to implement the Gold Standard Framework (GSF), Liverpool Care Pathways (LCP) and the Preferred Place of Care document (PPC).

In addition all relevant wards at Mid-Cheshire Hospitals Trust will have the chance to implement the Integrated Care Pathway and PPC as will a selected number of care homes.

Using an ‘educational organisation’ to encourage the use of end of life tools appears to be a unique approach.

This has led some to see the project as being solely an educational initiative. But the fact that the approach has produced good results so far has convinced most people.

Ensuring staff continue to use the tools once the facilitation period is over remains a challenge.

CHE has attempted to tackle this by carrying out its updating and educating within the care settings, which means they start to take on ownership of the tools.

The sub-groups have also included a wide range of professionals.

This has allowed problematic issues to be addressed locally, which will hopefully help increase uptake.