How Specialist Palliative Care can Support GSF:
Palliative care specialists, including doctors, nurses and hospice staff, can play a key role in the support and delivery of high quality end of life care across an area, not just within their own organisation. Their central role in delivering and improving community palliative care services will also be greatly enhanced by their support for primary care teams in using GSF. It will only be by real collaboration of generalists and specialists that effective improvements in community palliative care will be made.
| Some specific areas where specialists can contribute include: |
- Continued affirmation of the value and role of the generalist in the care of dying patients
- Enablement of generalists, using teaching, resources, guidelines
- Each practice to be linked to a named specialist palliative care team or clinical nurse specialist for support
- Attending GSF PHCT meetings to discuss those patients on the supportive care registers
- Attending audit / SEA practice meetings
- Delivering education sessions related to topics raised at these meetings or other queries
- Easily accessed support and advice for clinical queries - maybe an advice line
- Use of out of hours handover forms/SCR2/alternatives from hospice/CNS care
- Good liaison with primary care about all aspects of end of life care (brief information to avoid duplication including outline discussions with the patient and family).
- Discussion of use of 4 main drugs in out of hours palliative care and anticipatory prescribing
- Development of out of hours protocol and formulary
- Discussion of use of assessment tools
- Discussion of difficult ethical dilemmas and issues such as dealing with denial, DNAR, request for euthanasia, etc
- Advice on care of patients with non-cancer illnesses
- Development of a comprehensive collaborative end of life care strategy
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Working better together – Specialist palliative Care and GSF
