Implementation of Knowledge-Based Palliative Care

Summary

The research on ageing during the last couple of decades has increasingly focused on questions regarding the quality of life and life satisfaction of the old people. Yet the research indicates that when it comes to the final stage of life, the end includes unnecessary suffering and the quality of life drops. Palliative care has traditionally been provided successfully to younger persons dying from incurable illnesses while older people dying of multiple morbidities or "old age" has received far less of this type of care. However, sixty percent of all people who died in Sweden in 2010 were at least 80 years old and it is well known that dying among older people often is a prolonged period of suffering. One reason might be that it is more difficult to identify when the final stages of life begins for older persons.

The purpose of this project is to implement and evaluate how a knowledge-based model for palliative care in nursing homes affects the quality of life and the participation in the care process for older persons in nursing homes and their next of kin. A second aim is to explore the staff's implementation process of palliative care and the role of the leadership. The final aim is to investigate which factors (barriers and facilitators) that affect the implementation process of this model.

Conditions

• Ageing

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Educational Intervention

The seminar groups will be led by two experienced clinical nurses and researchers from the field of palliative care and geriatric care. The educational material consist of six themes; values in palliative care, symptom relief, dignity and a dignified death, collaborative co-creating care, support to next of kin and dialogue with older persons and next of kin about death and dying. The content of the different themes will have a common core for each nursing home but will be adjusted based on the expressed needs of each nursing home. New themes can be created related to the needs of the unique nursing home. The participants in the seminar groups will reflect together over the content of the developed binder of educational material and will relate it to their own work in order to identify areas suitable for changes and/or development.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Linnaeus University

  collaborator OTHER

• The Swedish Research Council

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Lund University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Gerd Ahlström, PhD · Department of Health Sciences, Lund University

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

SEQUENTIAL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2015-04-09

Primary Completion

2017-06-20

Completion

2017-10-15

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations