Healthcare Commissioning Forum

The Community Hospital Project involved collaborative working between an independent hospice (Thames Hospicecare) and an NHS provider (Berkshire East Community Services).

Twenty-one trained nursing staff from two community hospitals spent a week at the local hospice (two staff per week). The placements and associated education addressed values and beliefs about end of life care, communication skills, holistic assessment, advanced care planning, symptom management, and use of end of life care tools, for example, the Liverpool Care Pathway. The hospice multiprofessional team (nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and volunteers) provided teaching, mentorship and support for all secondees.

Common Core Competencies (Department of Health, 2009), St Christopher’s Hospice (2009) and the End of Life e-learning programme (Bee-Wee, 2009) provided the basis of the secondment curriculum and experiential learning at the hospice. A competency-based workbook was used by secondees to identify individual learning needs and assess, identify and demonstrate levels of competence in end of life care when they returned to their place of work. Staffs were asked to identify the changes in practice that they would implement on return to the community hospitals.
As a result of the project the Liverpool Care Pathway will be implemented within the community hospitals; with continued support from the end of life care staff to further develop end of life care.

The project targeted nursing staff and not doctors or other health care professionals.

For further information, please visit: https://arms.evidence.nhs.uk/resources/qipp/29513/attachment