An innovative, new approach
to delivering community-based end-of-life care – developed and piloted by the South
West Community Care Access Centre in London, Ontario and being evaluated by
Western University researchers – is now being used by a palliative care centre
in the United Kingdom.
St
Luke’s Hospice in Sheffield,
is the first British palliative care centre participating in this pioneering
international project aimed at providing greater levels of end-of-life care for
patients in their own homes.
EnComPaSS (Enhanced Community
Palliative Support Services), which is led by Deborah Fitzsimmons from
Western’s Faculty of Health Sciences, provides effective and cost efficient
care for UK patients and their families in their own homes. It is anticipated
that EnComPaSS will reduce the need for hospital admissions in England by
between 40 and 52 per cent.
“The situation that we have
in UK is very similar to the one in the Canada,” explains Dr. Fitzsimmons. “It
is extremely fragmented and we don’t have a continuity of care even within
palliative care. While we have fantastic specialists and palliative care
experts working through the hospices and hospitals, we don’t have the number
required to provide care for everyone
that needs it in the U.K.”
By providing high quality
palliative care in the community, EnComPaSS will help more people to die with
dignity in a place of their choosing.
Harnessing the latest in
information technology developments, EnComPaSS allows senior specialist
palliative nurses and doctors to provide direction to St Luke’s community
nurses providing high quality and timely care to multiple patients in their own
homes from a remote setting.
Using secure tablet computers
and software instead of paper-based systems, community nurses capture patient
clinical data at the patient’s bedside and both specialist and community nurse
can review the data via an online dashboard, thereby improving communication
and the quality of shared information across the service.
“The majority of our care is
delivered out in the community and at any given time our community nurses have
a case load of about 300 patients across the whole of the city,” said Judith
Park, St Luke’s Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Patient Care.
“This system allows our
community team to work closely with day-care services and bring together
medical, nursing, healthcare professionals and support teams all working
towards one goal, enabling people to die with dignity in familiar
surroundings.”
The development of EnComPaSS
has been a partnership between Western University, St Luke’s Hospice, Sensory
Technologies of Canada and the University of Sheffield, a partner in the
National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied
Health Research and Care Yorkshire and Humber (www.clahrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk) where
Deborah is seconded (part-time) to the Telehealth and Care Technolgies (TaCT) theme.
The partnership was awarded
£250,000 (approx. $500,000 CDN) from the National Health Services (NHS) Nursing
Technology Fund to develop the technology and training required to fully
integrate EnComPaSS.
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