"We are already seeing the benefits" - new service allows patients of QA Hospital to fulfil end-of-life wishes
A new service run by two Hampshire NHS trust and the Rowans Hospice is helping people have the end-of-life care that they want.
The Emergency End of Life Response Team (EELRT) has already helped 10 patients return home for their final days in its first month of operating. The service enabled a 99-year-old woman to fulfil her wish of dying peacefully at home with her beloved dog after she was admitted to hospital with a chest infection and a brain bleed.
EELRT is a collaboration between Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust (PHU), the Rowans Hospice and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight NHS Foundation Trust. It supports patients at Queen Alexandra Hospital and in the local community in three different ways:
Call Before Convey - the community EELRT service offers immediate advice to enable people to be cared for at home or their usual care home, rather than being taken to hospital.
Rapid Discharge Home - the hospital EELRT service rapidly assesses and coordinates care so that people can return home or to their usual care home.
Hospice at Home Team - provides 24-hour advice, support or visits; enabling people to be at home or their usual care home.
Dr Sarah Russell, consultant nurse and end of life care lead at QA Hospital, said: “In the last days of life, being able to stay in or return to your preferred place of care can make all the difference. The collaboration between the organisations that make up the EELRT service is making that possible. In our first month we are already seeing the benefits, with patients being able to stay at or return home."
Overall, 20 patients have met the EELRT criteria (18 in hospital and 2 at home) with 10 of them able to return or stay at home.
Dr Mary Parkes, palliative care doctor, Rowans Hospice, said: “For me it has been about connecting all the dots, by valuing the expertise of the different hospital and community teams, to make sure our plans turn into reality…enabling people to be where they want, with whom they want in the last days of life”
An example provided by PHU of a patient benefiting from the service was the 99-year-old woman who able to be at home with her dog. The woman’s family approached staff telling them that her greatest wish was to die peacefully at home with her dog.
The EELRT and hospital palliative care team were able to support the woman. With the help of The Rosemary Foundation, district nurses, ward staff and a private ambulance, she was safely home six hours later.