Alison Turner considers the strengths and weaknesses of a new report which presents the findings of the HSJ Commission on Hospital Care for Frail Older People, asking key questions of commissioners, providers and patients.
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Clarissa Giebel, Researcher and PhD student at the University of Manchester, writes her debut Elf blog on a qualitative study about the experiences of advance care planning amongst family caregivers of people with advanced dementia.
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Following our recent post on what has happened since the publication of the CIPOLD Confidential Inquiry report, we joined a tweet chat hosted by WeLDNurses with two of the report’s authors: Pauline Heslop and Matt Hoghton.
It was a really lively hour with some fantastic contributions. Here we present a summary of the comments with some links to information that was mentioned during the chat itself.
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This report from the Nuffield Trust is an important addition to the literature base on end of life care as it attempts to quantify the costs involved in end of life care, from the perspectives of the various services involved. Although there are limitations to the cost estimates, which are explicitly acknowledged, the findings will [read the full story…]
Caroline Struthers appraises a recent US cross-sectional study of the use of medications of “questionable benefit” in nursing home residents with advanced dementia. She concludes that all medications are of questionable value if they have side effects which might have a negative impact on quality of life or are likely to cause harm.
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The Government progress report on the Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities was published last week. In this blog, Pauline Heslop and colleagues who wrote the original Confidential Inquiry, reflect on the progress that has been made and what still needs to be done.
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Autonomy is defined as the freedom to determine one’s own actions or behaviour. It is a value at the heart of health and social care support and those supporting people with learning disabilities are constantly striving to maintain and indeed increase the autonomy of those they provide help to. The authors of this Netherlands based [read the full story…]
Josephine Neale summarises a recent review of qualitative evidence that finds carers’ views are mixed and lie on a spectrum of acceptance of their relative as actively dying with dementia.
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This collection of case studies is aimed at all people involved in the development and delivery of quality health services, in particular, commissioners, local authorities, voluntary sectors, and health professionals in all settings, including primary and secondary care. Some of the CCGs are also working with organisations from the retail sector, for example John Lewis. [read the full story…]
There are around 60,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK every year. Some of these events occur in the presence of relatives who may witness the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by the resuscitation team (you can find out more about CPR at the Resuscitation Council’s website). The emotional consequences of this for the relatives and the [read the full story…]
