Work

119 Increasing the number of dying patients referred to specialist palliative care team in a district general hospital

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Background 30% of acute hospital inpatients are in the final year of their life. (1) All clinicians should be able to recognise a patient approaching the end of their life. High quality treatment towards the end of life includes palliative care that focuses on managing pain and other distressing symptoms, as well as providing other support to patients and families (2) Our QI project aimed to identify wards with the highest number of expected deaths and lowest number of referrals to the palliative care team and increase the overall percentage of dying patients referred to our service from 54% to 80%, thereby supporting ward teams to deliver excellent end of life care through coaching and education. Secondary aims included Strengthening multi-disciplinary working between the wards/departments and palliative care team and a reduction in the number of clinical incidents associated with end of life care. Methods We identified wards with the highest number of deaths over a two-month period. We implemented targeted interventions on key wards including attending daily board rounds on AMU, contacting ED coordinator by telephone daily, and active in-reach to one department. We delivered presentations and teaching to relevant departments and held discussions with department leads on their specific challenges in identifying dying patients. Results Overall we have seen an increase of 18% of patients identified as dying that were referred to specialist palliative care team. Incidents related to end of life care reduced in 2/4 departments involved. Conclusion Having identified specific needs on several wards, we have affected change which has increased the number of dying patients referred to our specialist team. Going forward we are continuing to update our dataset and plan to rollout teaching to other wards. A further project following on from this has been an overhaul of our online referral form.

Source: Poster presentations

DOI: 10.1136/spcare-2025-pcc.137