End of life care audit – dying in hospital executive summary 2016
The results of the new end of life care audit run by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) show that there has been steady progress in the care of dying people since the previous audit carried out in 2013 and published in 2014.
The audit, funded by NHS England and Marie Curie, and commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP), is the first to be carried out following the official withdrawal of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) in 2014, although some hospitals had already started to replace the LCP with local policies before the previous audit. The new audit is a much more detailed investigation of the care of dying people against the five priorities of care established in ‘One Chance to Get it Right’, but includes some similar questions to the 2013 audit, to allow direct comparisons.
Overall, the results show that there have been documented improvements in:
- Recognition that patients are dying and that they have received holistic assessments of their care
- The amount and quality of communication with patients who are able to communicate, and with those identified as important to them
- Symptom control for the dying person
- Commitment to education, training, reporting and continuous improvement in caring for dying people
Download the full executive summary below
