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Bolton Palliative and End of Life Care
GSF for Care Homes Project
- Background to Project
- Gold Standards Framework has now been adapted for the care home setting,
as a new and quite separate GSF Care Home Programme (GSFCH).
This well structured and enabling programme to support best
implementation of the work aims to ensure that all residents will
receive a 'gold standard' of care at the end of their lives, and to help
them to "live well until they die".
This therefore includes the care for all residents of care homes, not
just those in the final days or weeks. The framework promotes
collaborative working with others, including GP's, Specialist
Palliative Care teams, Out of Hours services and others to improve care
provision and enable residents to be cared for and die in the place of
their choosing, avoiding an unnecessary transfer to hospital in
the last hours/days of life. Discussion of the resident's wishes
in an Advance Care Plan is part of the programme.
The aims of the GSFCH Programme are:
- To improve the quality of end of life care
- To improve collaboration with primary care and specialists
- To reduce admissions to hospital in the last stages of life
- "Consistency and quality run like a theme through GSF. This work
must not be diluted or dismantled. We highly recommend using GSF for
Care Homes, and the quality assurance process and we
enthusiastically support its use across the whole country" Martin
Green CEO of ECCA 2007
- The GSFCH Programme is the biggest and most comprehensive
programme to improve care at the end of life, and has already been
successfully used in almost 400 care homes over the last 3 years, (almost
11% of the nursing home population). It has now been further developed
for Phase 4 this year into a quality assured, fully accredited programme
with three stages This enables homes to build up expertise and experience
one step at a time, share their learning and experience with others,
and to most successfully implement the framework in such a way that the
changes and benefits will last and be sustained for years. This is not
a quick fix, but an effort to develop care within homes that will
be radically improved, build on self-sustaining models and
educational developments, and will ensure standards of best care are
maintained into the future
- Progress in Bolton
- GSF for Care Homes Documentation
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