Palliative Care

(asked on 15th September 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that health professionals across the United Kingdom are made aware of all the palliative care teams and resources at their disposal.


Answered by
 Portrait
Ben Gummer
This question was answered on 21st September 2015

We are committed to ensuring high quality palliative care services are available to everyone who needs them, whether they are being cared for in hospital, a care home, or their own home.

Palliative and end of life care is everyone’s business and individual clinicians, hospitals and general practitioner practices are responsible for ensuring they are aware of local palliative care provision and for coordinating that care effectively so that their patients can receive high quality palliative care services when they need them.

In 2014, we published One Chance to Get it Right, which set out a new approach to care for dying people based on five Priorities for Care, and specific guidance for health and care staff, provider organisations and commissioners in England on implementing the new approach.

Following publication, members of the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People, which produced the report, undertook a range of activities to raise awareness of the Priorities and the new approach among health and care staff, the public, dying people, relatives and carers.

Alongside this, Health Education England, working with NHS England and others developed new and updated education and training materials and provision to ensure the new approach was fully embedded in the training staff receive.

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