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Palliative Care
This section is provided for health professionals (GPs, dentists, pharmacists etc).
Members of the general public are welcome to use these pages but should be aware that they are not written with them in mind. Please choose an option on the left for information aimed at the general public.
Guidelines
Palliative Care for adults and children
- Guidance
This guidance is used across South West London, Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire, Mount Vernon and Sussex Cancer Networks. You can download the guidance onto your computer. If you want to use it online you will find:
- Contents (pg 8-9 for adult section or pg 2 for paediatric section)
- Crisis Symptom Control Guidelines (pg 253-258)
Resuscitation and natural death
In light of the publication of the British Medical Association / Royal College of Nurse and UK Resuscitation Council guidelines (2007) and other developments, Brighton and Hove City Teaching PCT's Do not attempt to resuscitate / allow a natural death policy for patient at the end of life has been updated. The policy has also been renamed to 'Allowing a natural death at end of life from chronic disease'.
Local Enhanced Service
The LES Palliative Care aims to support practices in providing the highest standard of generalist palliative care to patients. It is based upon the Macmillan Gold Standards Framework which facilitates the primary health care team to support patients in the last stage of life, with the best physical, spiritual and social care available and to enable them to die in their place of choice.
The Gold Standards Framework aims to tackle professional isolation & provide support by establishing 7 key standards, providing examples, ideas and templates. Practices are helped to set up supportive care registers. Support packs for patients and carers are provided together with resource packs and conferences for professionals.
The aims are for practices to use this support to develop their own practice based protocols and establish excellent links with local specialist palliative care services.
Thirty GP practices are currently signed up for this LES, supported by a local GSF coordinator. For further details please contact anthony.flint@bhcpct.nhs.uk or refer to the LES section of the PCT website.
Palliative care folder
Updated community palliative care support pack 2012
We are pleased to inform you about the recent complete revision of our community palliative care support pack.
Since the first version in 2002 the pack has been an integral part of good care for dying patients in Brighton and Hove alongside the Gold Standard Framework and the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient.
The new pack consists of a support folder with a summary of important information and contact numbers, a Drug Instruction Chart for syringe drivers and injections and The Palliative Care Hand Over form for communication with the out of hours services.
Packs of pads of red-bordered DNACPR forms have all been distributed to all GPs. To support GPs with using the DNACPR forms, there are guidance notes and a patient leaflet available to download.
Palliative care handover form and other useful documentation
- Palliative care handover form (135kb Word file)
- Palliative care handover form EMIS LV (125kb Word file)
- Palliative care handover form EMIS PCS (136kb Word file)
- Palliative care handover form Vision (703kb Word file)
- Palliative care handover form SystmOne (135kb Word file)
- Palliative care drug instructions chart (101kb Word file)
- Palliative care contacts list (85kb Word file)
- Guidance notes DNACPR (44kb Word file)
- DNACPR leaflet (246kb pdf file)
- Palliative Care Folder 2012 PDF Electronic version (1mb pdf file)
We would like to highlight the importance of using the Palliative Care handover form.
Where patient details are provided on the form and faxed to the Out of Hours Services, patients' wishes are much more likely to be documented and adhered to, and patients are therefore less likely to be admitted to hospital as an emergency (unless necessary).
You should all have previously received a copy of The Adult Palliative Care Guidance 2006 with detailed information on symptom management and palliative care issues. It also contains a section on paediatric palliative care. Again this should be Palliative Adult Network Guidelines (3rd edition) 2011 . These have been distributed to all GP practices in B&H.
We hope that you will find the information helpful. It is our intention to keep it a live document and we are interested in your feedback.
If you require further copies of the support folders, or need any help with the other documents such as guidance notes and contacts list, please contact: Lynn Smyth, Business Support Manager, Lynn.Smyth@BHCPCT.nhs.uk 01273 574749
Anthony Flint
Commissioning Manager
Tel: 01273 574687
Email: anthony.flint@bhcpct.nhs.uk
