Planning ahead - care home residents' experiences of advance care planning
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Surrey Health and Wellbeing Board has identified 'helping people die well' as a strategic focus. Our research showed that providers were taking a variety of approaches to end of life care planning so we spoke to care home residents across Surrey about their experiences and attitudes.
In Summer 2019 we visited 15 care homes, speaking to staff and to 21 residents or their families about advance care plans.
We found
- people who had made plans were happy to have done so, but many had not made plans and did not wish to
- the main barriers to planning were lack of urgency and not knowing what they should be thinking about, as much as an unwillingness to think about dying.
- most plans are initiated/enabled by professionals (HCPs, care workers) rather than individuals, often in response to a health event
- plans may be recorded in different places and we found evidence of inconsistent plans for individuals
We recommended
- support for providers (training, systems) to enable care staff and HCPs to initiate conversations and help people make plans
- encouraged providers to check an individual's plans are consistent across all paperwork
As a result of our work we are now part of the Surrey Heartlands End of Life Strategy Development Task and Finish team.