Healthy Living
Healthy Living
End of Life Care
The definition of End of Life Care is:
• The care of adults with any advancing, progressive, incurable illness;
• Care given in all settings;
• Care given in the last year of life;
• Care given to patients, carers and family members.
The local Adult Palliative and End of Life Care strategy Group aim to deliver ‘A world class end of life care service for people that enables choice and ensures quality’.
The aim is to achieve a 10% reduction of deaths in hospital by 2012, with 80% of people dying in their preferred place of care with dignity and respect.
A three year work plan involving partners, stakeholders and local people is being developed to ensure seamless, coordinated and timely care for adults at the end of their life.
End of Life Care captures specialist palliative care workforces across NHs, social and voluntary sector providers and works in close partnership with the providers of care including our full range of community and primary care services; these are considerable drivers in enabling care outside of hospital.
There are a number of different frameworks that individually provide guidance on the standards of care patients should expect to receive at end of life. These are:
- Gold Standards Framework (GSF) – This is aimed at both Primary Care and Care Home settings and seeks to improve the care provided to patients nearing their end of life.
- Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) – This is a clinical pathway that has been standardised across the PCT that provides guidance to clinicians.
- Preferred Priorities of Care – This is a patient record, designed to record and monitor patient and carer choices for end of life and ensures communication across all care providers of the patients wishes and services involved.
An End of Life Care model has been developed and implemented in January 2010 by the local End of Life Palliative Care Strategy Group. This ensures that the national tools are fully utilised across all care settings. This model is supported by the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network and Macmillan and being showcased as a model of excellence.
