In what ways have End of Life policies developed and what has been thereason for change?In this piece of work, I am going to bediscussing in what ways have the end of life policies developed and the reasonsfor the change. The government published in 2008 the national End of Life Carestrategy which is created to promote and give a high-quality care to all adultsat the end of their lives. The very up to date strategy reports itsprogressions and also sets out a plan to shift the responsibilities of this tothe NHS England. The focus on the end of life care is developed byeach strategic health authorities in England and is a part of the eightmedicine-based pathways of the next stage review. The Department of Health isone of the Ends of Life Medicine based leads. The Department of Health hasdeveloped and further improved on the newly-visible findings by working with anumber of health and social care professionals, carers, patients and the publicin different areas.
In order to improve and develop on End of Life Nationalstrategy of promoting high-quality care to adults they gave them the chance togive and share new ideas with each other. The End of Life Strategy is fullysupported by the department of health so they can reach their aims of providinga high-quality of care in end of patients’ lives and for their families. TheEnd of Life policy has developed by involving its patients and their familiesin the end of their lives and takes into account their needs andpreferences/wishes. Other ways it has developed is that it’s now planned andco-ordinated this is so it can provide high-quality care. Also, patients careand support are managed wherever they are in the last days of their lives andafter death as well.
The strategy also develops by having a number ofresearches done on End of Life in order to improve its services. It has done thisby commissioning the National End of life care Intelligence Network which isestablished in 2010. The NEoLCIN does a number of researchers and improves thenational analysis and data of end of life services for adults. The main aim ofdoing these research is to help the NHS and other Agencies to deliver a betterquality of care for adults in end of life by using latest information andresources. The reason for the change of this was because’every year an estimated of 500 thousand individual dies in England'(dyingmatters.org). Some of those receive the great level of care at the end oftheir lives however, others don’t.
It is recognized that one of the underlyingissues is that many health and social care services aren’t connected together.Due to this, the communications between staffs and different agencies are notwell enough and the quality of services given to patients are poor. ‘Anestimated 48,000 people who died last year experienced poor care when dying,says a report from seven charities including Macmillan'(BBC News, 2016) Therehave been many surveys done by the general public and from those, it informedus that by giving individuals approaching the end of life the correct supportand chances most people would like to die at their home.
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‘7% say they wouldprefer to die in hospital, compared to two-thirds (67%) who would prefer to dieat home’ (Public Health England 2013). However, in reality, a small number ofthem manage to do this and majority pass away in services such as ahospital,’89.6% had some hospital care in the final year'(Theo Georghiou et al,2012). This is not where the majority of people would like to die in as foundin surveys.
Death is not usually openly spoken about within the society andmany adults don’t discuss the way they would like to die with a friend orfamily. This then makes it hard for their family to know what their wishes are.Health and social care professionals also find it hard to discuss with theirpatients about their end of life and how to go on about it. Often death is seenas a failure by professional as they haven’t received professional training inhow to communicate about it. As there is an absence of this discussion it isharder to meet individual’s requirements and preferences.
Patients approachingthe end of life require support from a variety of services and also, they mightwant to be changed to different places such as a hospital to home. However,this cannot be met as coordination are poor. In the past years, hospices andspecialist palliative services have displayed the many things that can be doneto give patients mental, physical, social and emotional care for themselves andtheir families. The End of Life policy builds on the way we see things and onthe expertise of a number of individuals, services, and organizations.To conclude the End of Life Strategy providesall the health and social care services a framework which gives a solid basicstructure on which they can build on.
It also sets the governmentresponsibility and dedication to improving the funding that is made availableto end of life services. As a consequence, we can be strongly confident thatthe quality of care will continue to improve as time goes on. This is veryimportant as the end of live care matters to every one of us no matter if it’sone us reaching the end of our lives or member of our family as it affects theway we live on.
