The ChoiceProject is a short term funded project focussing on improving end of life care by connecting practitioners between health and social care. The project was developed in collaboration between NHS Lothian, Queen Margaret University, St Columba’s Hospice and funded by the Queens Nursing Institute Scotland.
We developed a shared communication sheet to address the needs of shared documentation between health and social care staff.
Informal teaching sessions were provided by DNs for social care staff to dispel myths around death and increase their confidence in carrying out end of life care at home.
We have worked together with the cared for person and their carer to assess, plan and evaluate care, giving sufficient time to give streamlined, coordinated care with staff continuity from different agencies to achieve a dignified death.
Video Transcript
The Choice Project: Janet Stirrat
“I’m working on a new initiative called The Choice Project which is connecting health and social care to offer individualised care at end-of-life at home.
We’ve been working on this project with Queen Margaret University, St. Columbas Hospice, Edinburgh Social Work and the QNIS, and the plan is to have a more integrated delivery of care to ensure the cared-for person at home has the optimal level of care that can be achieved in their own home.
So this involves us having some informal education sessions with the social care workers, as we’ve realised over the last six months when we’ve been involved in this project, some of the social care workers don’t have much experience in this area and are quite anxious about being in that position, so we’re hoping – and what we’re beginning to see – is that they are feeling more confident. We’re dispelling some myths around end-of-life care and really empowering the social care workers to feel confident in carrying out this care.
In the past a lot of what has happened is that the district nurses have taken over the personal care at the end of someone’s life. When they’ve had social care workers because of this lack of confidence and we’re trying to work together so we could work with the social care workers and they get to stay with the person throughout their journey.
What’s good about being involved in this Choice Project is that we are building relationships with some of our social work colleagues whereas is in the past we have been visiting the same people at separate times and our care hasn’t been integrated very well whereas we’re hoping with this, it’s going to be a more streamlined approach.
We’ve also felt that there’s been barriers broken down and we understand each other’s role much more clearly now, and we found from some of the social care workers that they were actually quite nervous to contact district nurses before, whereas now they feel much more equal to contact us at any time and that they’re so important and delivering the care that we respect their input and we value their role. It would be even better if we could roll this project out across the whole of the city.
Currently we’re just piloting in the area I work in, in the southeast of Edinburgh, and hopefully we’ll be able to roll it out in the future.”
