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Project

FLanders study to Improve End-of-life Care and Evaluation tools – FLIECE (IWT534)

For patients with life-threatening illnesses, guaranteeing a good end to life requires the impeccable assessment and evaluation of their needs and preferences and the delivery of adequate and patient-centred care. The World Health Organisation has promoted palliative care as the preferred approach to care for people with life-threatening illnesses and has defined it as a major public health priority for all countries. Palliative care is defined as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. This definition emphasises the applicability of palliative care early in the course of illness, in conjunction with disease modifying and life prolonging therapies, alongside end-of-life or terminal care which describes the management of patients during the period when death is imminent, and likely to occur within a few hours or at most, some days The aim of this project is to promote better palliative care and end-of-life care by developing tools to guide clinicians and health care institutions, and to bridge the gap between academia and health policy. The current research project is strongly aimed at improving palliative care and end-of-life for patients at home and in care home situation. The main strategic aims of the FLIECE-project are threefold:

1) to assess how the quality of palliative care and end-of-life care in Flanders can be improved and to develop and test the necessary tools (handbooks, care pathways, guidelines, training, etc.) for this purpose
2) to test and improve existing evaluation tools for palliative care and end-of-life care
3) to evaluate societal changes in end-of-life care and end-of-life decision-making in Flanders

By focusing on interventions to improve the quality of palliative and end-of-life care and on the testing of evaluation tools, the strategic aims of the FLIECE project focus directly on a combination of scientific research and societal dissemination of the results, hence, on effective scientific valorisation.

The project is constructed around 8 different studies, broken up into 14 work packages.

Study 1. Avoiding unnecessary hospitalization in the last phase of life
WP 1 Study of avoidable and unnecessary hospitalizations at the end of life
WP 2 A guideline for GPs and care homes regarding the prevention of unnecessary hospitalizations in the last phase of life

Study 2. Timely recognition of palliative care needs by the general practitioner
WP 3 Study of timely recognition of palliative care needs by the GP
WP 4 A guideline for GPs to facilitate timely recognition of palliative care needs

Study 3. Improving end-of-life care communication
WP 5 Evaluation study of an end-of-life communication training for GPs
WP 6 An updated guideline and training on end-of-life care communication for GPs

Study 4. Improving end-of-life care in residential care for older people
WP 7 Study of timely initiation of palliative care in residential care homes
WP 8 A guideline for the timely initiation of palliative care for people with dementia

Study 5. Evaluation of the quality of end-of-life care in care homes in Flanders
WP 9 Study of the quality of end-of-life care with the InterRAI instruments
WP 10 Evaluation of the use of a guideline for the timely initiation of palliative care for people with dementia, assessed with InterRAI instruments.

Study 6. Evaluation of end-of-life care in acute geriatric hospital wards in Flanders
WP 11 Implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway in acute geriatric hospital wards in Flanders
WP 12 Evaluation of the quality of end-of-life care in acute geriatric hospital wards in Flanders

Study 7. Evaluation of the use of quality indicators in palliative care in Flanders
WP 13 Validation and evaluation of a set of quality indicators in palliative care for evaluation of structure, process and outcome in palliative care

Study 8. Societal evaluation of end-of-life care and decision-making in Flanders
WP 14 Evaluation of medical end-of-life practices using a nationwide large scale post-mortem survey and comparison with three previous similar surveys
..
Date:1 Mar 2011 →  28 Feb 2015
Keywords:Medical Sociology
Disciplines:Sociology and anthropology