Case study:

06 November 2009

Partnership approach in Stoke-on-Trent

Key points

A partnership development between NHS Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke-on-Trent Community Health Services and the Douglas Macmillan Hospice is helping to develop better ways of supporting people who wish to die at home.

Stakeholders include representatives from both NHS Stoke-on-Trent commissioning and provider arms, the end of life clinical champion for NHS Stoke-on-Trent, education staff from the teaching PCT and the Douglas Macmillan Hospice End of Life Education Centre. Members worked together to devise a training needs analysis using the end of life care core principles and competences, developed by Skills for Care and Skills for Health.

The training needs analysis was distributed to district nurses and their managers to allow a workforce profile to be compiled. The results of this exercise have already started to bring early benefits. In particular providers can now identify and address their end of life care training needs.

In addition, the Douglas Macmillan Hospice and its provider arm education programme have devised courses to meet end of life care training needs. Meanwhile NHS Stoke-on-Trent commissioners will use the core competences when developing service specifications for new end of life care services in the community.

The training needs analysis also helped to confirm that respondents were up to speed with core competences and that stakeholders already had well-developed individual approaches for care of the dying.

The end of life care resources have also helped encourage a multi-agency focus on the skills required by generalist staff who have frequent dealings with end of life care. Laura Janda, Service Improvement and Development Manager for NHS Stoke-on-Trent, says: ‘Although we tested this on district nursing staff, the core principles and competences are sufficiently broad to work across different roles, occupations and organisations.’