Vote for Hospice Friendly Hospitals ‘Dignity by Design’ video

Dignity By Design from Angela Mezzetti on Vimeo.

‘Dignity by Design’ highlights the importance of providing personal, private and dignified spaces for patients and families at end-of-life and the Irish Hospice Foundation’s Hospice Friendly Hospitals ‘Design and Dignity‘ initiative.

This short film has been entered in the Better Together video competition which is highlighting the work of charities to the public by inviting them to vote for featured videos. You can vote for and share the video HERE

Hospice Friendly Hospitals – Design & Dignity video

This short video from the Hospice Friendly Hospitals programme featuring interviews with Gabriel Byrne and Seamus Heaney emphasizes the importance of personal, dignified spaces for patients at the end of life. More details on the HfH Design and Dignity fund are available HERE

Nursing Times article examines delayed hospital discharge for patients with palliative needs

The current issue of Nursing Times features the findings of a (UK) audit of patients with palliative care needs. The findings point to poor communication,  equipment shortages, difficulties transferring patients to care pathways and lack of cooperation between hospitals and social care networks as causing delayed discharge for palliative patients.

View the full article here; Why do patients with complex palliative needs experience delayed hospital discharge? | Practice | Nursing Times.

Also in the current issue, Clare Lomas examines why nurses should adopt a systematic approach in facilitating patients end-of-life preferences in her article ‘Hospital nurses should be ‘systematic’about end-of-life care’

Resource spotlight – End-of-life care intelligence network

The National End-of -Life Care Intelligence Network (NEoLCIN) was established as part of the UK End-of-Life care strategy to collate research and information on palliative and end-of-life care.

The NEoLCIN website brings together research, data sources, resources and even case study profiles to create a repository of information to assist practitioners, researchers, social and health care workers and those researching end-of-life care quality.

The  resources section features links to relevant journals and publications and the data sources page lists reliable sources for the assessment of end-of-life care subdivided into categories such as dementia, hospice care, mortality, place of death or sudden death.

This is a very comprehensive portal site for anyone looking for reliable end-of-life care research and assessment material so well worth bookmarking or signing up for their email content alerts.

Conference;End-Of-Life care from the Margins to the mainstream

Calling all healthcare managers, acute and community hospital and  nursing home staff, social workers, palliative, hospice and bereavement  care professionals.

The Hospice Friendly Hospitals programme, the five-year project aiming to introduce hospice friendly practices into hospital settings recently completed phase one with the conclusion of the first national audit of end of life care practice in Irish Hospitals.

Findings from the audit along with the report  ‘Quality standards for end-of-life care in Hospitals‘ will be formally launched at the conference ‘End of life care, from the margins to the mainstream’ which takes place in Clontarf Castle, Dublin on Wednesday May 19th.

The conference offers an opportunity to reflect on the audit findings, examine standards and enter into discussion about the process of bringing end-of-life care from the margins to the mainstream. As such it is of relevance to policy makers, researchers and practitioners or anyone with an interest in end-of-life care.

Full details and conference schedule are available HERE and places can be booked by emailing grace.osullivan@hospice-foundation.ie closing date for bookings is May 14th