Dorset healthcare providers partner for end of life project

A group of healthcare providers across Dorset are working on a new project focusing on sharing end of life experiences, thanks to a one-off grant of £40,000 made by Dorset Clinical Commissioners.

Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Forest Holme Hospice, Dorset Health Care and Lewis Manning Hospice Care are collaborating to make it easier for people approaching the end of life and their families to share their experiences, learn from and support each other.

The group have also teamed up with Care Opinion  to make it easy for people to share their experiences in their own words online. Clare Gallie, CEO of Lewis-Manning Hospice Care, said: “This project will help us to understand what our patients really want and allow us to focus our support on what really matters to them’’.

Palliative and end of life care staff will be invited to respond to people who have shared their stories. This has been shown in other areas to have a positive impact on staff morale, confidence and sense of purpose at work. The group, including people with lived experience of care at end of life, is also working with values specialist Jackie LeFèvre to understand what stories tell us about what’s most important to us.

“The current standard surveys and requests for feedback from families and patients are relatively impersonal” says Saskie Dorman, Consultant in Palliative Medicine at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust who is based at Forest Holme Hospice. “We don’t learn as much as we could or should from people’s experiences, both what went well and what needs to improve. This work will help us to learn directly from the stories and experiences shared about what’s important to people about their care and support, what’s working well and what needs to be improved.”

Dorset Health Care, added: “The opportunity to be part of this project will expand our current patient experience measures and continues our commitment to put patients, carers and their families at the heart of everything we do.  We want people to be able to share their experiences of health and care in ways which are safe, simple, and lead to learning and change which we feel is achievable by subscribing to Care Opinions.”

For more information visit Forest Holme Hospice