Isabel Hospice in Hertfordshire is piloting a new project to train care home staff.
EASE (Educate Advise Support Empower) will see a Clinical Nurse Specialist from the hospice train staff from four different care homes in the county, with the aim of empowering them to be confident in providing specialist palliative care to their residents, and in turn reduce the number of unnecessary admissions of their residents to hospital, ensuring they are able to die in the place of their choosing, which is often in the home.
Kirsty Hill, the dedicated nurse for EASE, said:
“This is part of the hospice’s five year strategy; to work in collaboration with, and spread the knowledge of, palliative care to other healthcare providers through education and training.
We know that we are part of an increasingly elderly population living with multiple, often complex, health issues. Many of us move to residential or nursing care homes where staff manage palliative care needs on a daily basis, caring for more people at the end of life than anywhere else.”
She added:
“Because care home staff work so hard and deserve the training invested in them, this project will undoubtedly have positive results for both staff and care home residents. I have started working closely with four homes to improve staff confidence and knowledge in offering expert palliative and end of life care.
“I work with care home teams, the GPs that support them, the residents and their families, tackling subjects such as advance care planning, having difficult conversations around death and dying, supporting families and reducing avoidable hospital admissions at an already difficult time.
“I spend a morning and an afternoon every week in each home, providing opportunistic informal teaching, providing an advisory service, introducing processes and reference files for the units, going on GP ward rounds and empowering the team and the residents to have a say in their care. I am keen to celebrate the good work of care home teams and believe everyone has a right to receive excellent end of life care and that should come from the people they are most familiar with and in the place they call home.”
For more information visit Isabel Hospice
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