Providing good care for people living and dying in residential and care homes or nursing homes in Europe is one of the major clinical and public health challenges of the 21st century.
February sees the start of a joint research project, Comparing the effectiveness of palliative care for elderly people in long-term care facilities in Europe (PACE), funded by the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
The £5.5 million project will be led by Professor Lieve Van den Block and the End of life Care Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and involve researchers and clinicians from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, UK and Poland. Each of the six countries will takes on responsibility for different elements of the five-year study.
The project will involve comparing how palliative care is provided for older people living in care homes across 28 European countries. This mapping exercise will examine practices, processes and services and effectively establish a study benchmark.
The project will also include a three-year trial of a previously developed UK palliative care model. Research (including economic, staff and process elements) will determine if the new way to deliver care actually makes a difference.
Lancaster University’s International Observatory on End of Life Care (IOELC) will run the UK research element of the study, which will involve the mapping work and developing training for care home staff.
The UK team will develop an educational resource pack to ensure the new model is culturally appropriate and suitable for adoption in participating countries and then support delivery of the tailored training packages for each country.
The teaching resource will use a ‘train the trainer’ style delivery method to cascade improvements quickly and effectively throughout the participating European countries.
Trainers from across Europe will attend a week-long training course at Lancaster University and will be supported by the Observatory throughout the implementation period.
Observatory Director Professor Sheila Payne explained the final part of the research would determine what was effective and then ensure those findings were then fed into policy development at a European Commission level to improve palliative care for older people in care homes.
“This hugely important area of care for older people is such a big issue in Europe with people living longer,” she said. “Care homes are likely to be a place where some older people will spend time and a place where many people die. This research programme seeks to ensure they die in the best and most dignified way they can. It’s really important and really challenging.”
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