As specialist nurses and community matrons you may work both with patients and also at a strategic level. Linking across organisations you are in a key position to use knowledge of GSF to share good practice. GSF can promote your work within practice teams. You have a key role in facilitating team work and including other professionals, to optimise care for patients, families and carers. The Next Stage GSF ‘Going for Gold’ aims to bring all practices up to the level of the best by 2012 and includes a quality improvement training programme which you may offer to facilitate.
Work strategically with the PCT to ensure procedures are in place for an integrated care pathway at the end of life, nurse verification of death, anticipatory prescribing, use of syringe drivers in the community, urgent access to equipment, Advance Care Planning, home support for patients and carers, social services and benefits advice, a locality register or system for sharing information across organisations. You may be able to encourage change by working with the QOF team, audit department, training department, district nursing hierarchy, LMC and practice based commissioning groups.
Specialist nurses can often enable the district nurses & GPs to provide best quality care
Together we can ensure a gold standard of care for every patient in the last year, months, weeks and days of their life.
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