The Essentials of GSF

'It's about living well until you die'

GSF is a systematic common-sense approach to formalising best practice, so that quality end of life care becomes standard for every patient. It helps clinicians identify patients in the last years of life, assess their needs, symptoms and preferences and plan care on that basis, enabling patients to live and die where they choose. GSF embodies an approach that centres on the needs of patients and their families and encourages inter-professional teams to work together. GSF can help coordinate better care provided by generalists across different settings.

Please download Adobe Flash Player to see this content. Prof Keri Thomas

To provide for patients with any final illness:

1. Consistent high quality care
2. Alignment with patients’ preferences
3. Pre-planning and anticipation of needs
4. Improved staff confidence and teamwork
5. More home based, less hospital based care

Needs based coding - using the 'surprise question' to predict main areas of need and support required

GSF in Primary Care Briefing Paper

GSF has enabled me to do the job of District Nurse I'd always wanted to do

GSF is magic! It is MUCH more than it first appears - it is like a key that unlocks the creativity of people, and releases the potential for a new way of working for the whole team. It helps us do what we already want to do, but even better. Now we really do talk to each other - it has transformed the way we care for our very ill patients, and has put us back in touch with the reasons we are doing this job in the first place.
GP and DN West Midlands

We hope that the widespread dissemination of the Gold Standards Framework as a tool to ensure that information follows the patient will do something to address the major issue of communication failure in some palliative care.
House of Commons Health Committee Palliative Care July 2004