Shropshire Star

Wishes prioritised in new way at Severn Hospice

Patients’ wishes are being prioritised in a new way for doctors to record how someone wants to be cared for at the end of their life.

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And Severn Hospice has led the local training and introduction of the change, part of a national initiative to improve how people are helped to think about plan their end-of-life care.

The charity, which cares for people in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and Mid Wales living with an incurable illness, worked with Shropshire Partners in Care, which represents independent care companies locally, to provide more than 100 hours of training sessions, attended by more than 600 GPs, nurses, nursing home and hospice staff.

Attendees then trained their colleagues in their workplaces so the new system could be introduced this month.

Called ‘ReSPECT’ – Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Treatment and Care – it enables all healthcare professionals to have a structured conversation with a patient and their family about what to do in an emergency.

Each patient would have their wishes formally captured on a new form which looks at balancing a patient’s care and comfort against clinical interventions. It replaces the previous ‘Do Not Attempt Resuscitation’ protocols, which experts said were more focused on clinical considerations than patients’ priorities.

The form is one part of a more general ‘Advance Care Plan’, which looks at a whole range of other considerations patients and relatives might have, such as where they would like to be treated, and even who they might want to be with them.

Professor Derek Willis, Severn Hospice’s Medical Director, said: “The new ReSPECT approach is clearer for patients and easier for people like me to talk through with them. Once the ReSPECT form has been completed, it’s the patient’s property and it stays with them wherever they are being cared for.

“Because of what we do, we are a centre of excellence for palliative care and it was very rewarding, professionally, to be asked to support the implementation of a national scheme locally.”

Eirian Thomas, one of the hospice’s Outreach nurses, who led the training sessions with SPiC, said: “If you ask a loved one about their ‘final wishes’, they’ll answer about things like where they’d like to be buried or if they want to be cremated.

“But the reality is there so much more to address for them and their families and we, as healthcare professionals, want to get that right for them. ReSPECT and advance care planning really do that.

“Conversations about this type of thing are never going to be easy but the new way means patients can be much clearer about what they want to happen, where, and who should be there.”

Shropshire Partners in Care is a not-for-profit organisation which represents independent nursing, residential, supported living and domiciliary care companies in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin.