Community nursing teams have acquired extended roles in palliative and end-of-life care during the pandemic. Despite increased caseloads, they have continued to provide face to face care for dying people at home and in care homes, say researchers in an article published in the British Journal of Community Nursing. Ben Bowers at the University of […]
Dr Stephen Barclay provides expert help on end of life care in the community during the pandemic
As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic develops, increasing numbers of seriously ill and dying patients are being cared for at home and in care homes by GPs, nurses, and their families and friends. Significant challenges are emerging for primary care practitioners including: symptom management for the dying phase of COVID-19; planning and coordination of […]
Research Alert and video: Advance care planning in heart failure patients
This research alert is for those working in healthcare. It summarises the case for interventions to engage clinicians in advance care planning with heart failure patients and sets out the latest findings from our research into what interventions work. See the two minute video about this topic on our YouTube channel and download this page […]
85% of GP practices in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough use data sharing system supported by Primary Care Unit research
85% of GP practices in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area now use an electronic data sharing system designed by practitioners, patients, IT specialists and commissioners in the region. This initiative is underpinned by research carried out by Dr Mila Petrova and Dr Stephen Barclay at the Primary Care Unit’s Palliative and End of Life Care Group. The data sharing system, […]
New funds for Cambridge’s centre of expertise in palliative and end of life care research and teaching
Over 500,000 people die each year in England and Wales, and evidence shows that many receive suboptimal care. An anonymous charitable trust has made a substantial donation of £750,000 to the Cambridge Palliative and End of Life Care Group, where researchers are pressing forward with wide ranging discoveries about the experiences of people in the […]
‘Please Make Comfortable’: prescribing and communicating opioids in the wake of Gosport
The latest crisis concerning UK end-of-life care arose in June 2018, with the publication of the Jones inquiry into hundreds of premature deaths at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in the 1990s. The inquiry concluded that misuse of diamorphine and syringe drivers, often following the clinical instruction ‘please make comfortable’, led to the excess deaths: a […]