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Improving patience experience
£543,000
on patient welfare, treatment
and equipment, including:
£83,000
on an incubator to transport premature
babies safely
£149,000
to extend and strengthen King's Volunteers
£25,000
on a sensory room for older patients
Enhancing end of life care
Our funding has enabled the year-long appointment
of Georgie Osborne, an experienced palliative care
registrar who is now the Trust’s end of life fellow. She
and her team are responsible for improving patient
experience by ensuring staff have the skills and
confidence to deliver holistic care to people who are
approaching the end of their life.
End of life care is made up of multiple strands. It can
mean managing a patient’s symptoms and making sure
they are comfortable but it can also mean setting up
community or hospice support for someone who is being
discharged or providing counselling for loved ones.
Georgie believes that this complex process has the best
outcomes when the patient is given the opportunity
to be involved in the decision making. Her goal is to
ensure staff have the training to be able to manage
this process sensitively and proactively. “The patient’s
wants and needs must be at the centre of the decision
making. Not every end of life patient will want to have
that conversation but it but it should an available
option for those who do.”
One of Georgie’s key areas of focus is advanced care
planning, “If your health is ailing and your time is
getting shorter, some people will want to plan more.
But it’s not just about where you want to die or whether
you want to be resuscitated. It’s far bigger than that.
It’s about having meaningful conversations with people
whose health is
changing – it can make
all the difference to how a person
experiences the dying process and care at the end”.
With an initial focus on frail inpatients, Georgie has
been working with multiple departments across the
Trust. In the last few months, she and her team have
developed and implemented initiatives that help staff
deliver the best care to end of life patients.
The first cycle of teaching has been conducted across
King’s and the PRUH, including role-playing sessions, a
teaching faculty, a monthly open forum, and interactive
video and virtual training. The sessions are inclusive
and everyone is encouraged to attend. She has also
developed print and online resources that support the
learning, including a new website page, communications
skills crib sheets, posters, and ID flashcards with a QR
code that directs staff to further resources.
Our funding has enabled this crucial body of work to be
established and we are delighted to report that, since
October 2021, Georgie and the team have delivered
training to approximately 150 members of the geriatric
and acute medical teams. She hopes that, going
forward, the training will be included as a mandatory
induction session for all staff, “End of life care is
everyone’s business. And everyone should be equipped
with the skills and expertise to initiate and manage
those difficult conversations”.
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