End of Life Care

End of life care provides support and symptom management for people who are approaching death, supporting them to live as well as possible until they die, and to die with dignity. It also includes support for their family or carers.

At Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust we aim to deliver person centred, safe and compassionate end of life care.  We recognise that death and dying is a fundamental part of life and so it is a core part of our business. We want to ensure that all our staff are equipped and supported as they care for people at the end of life and their loved ones.

To help deliver our vision, we have set up a multi-disciplinary steering group that is working to identify ways of improving the quality and consistency of the care we deliver for people in the last few weeks and days of life.  The project aims to ensure all end of life care for patients, families and carers is delivered in line with national guidance.  Specifically it intends to:

- Improve identification of people in the last months and weeks of life

- Provide effective person-centred care planning which encompasses a holistic assessment of need

- Deliver high quality, evidence based care and symptom management 24/7

- Strengthen public and clinician engagement in developing end of life care at the Trust

We are working with clinicians, patients and the public to develop the new end of life care strategy. Following a successful public event in December 2014, a group of volunteer patients is helping review our publications and will be contributing to the design of the Trust’s forward strategy for end of life care which will be launched in October 2015.