A survey to determine the priorities for end of life care has been launched to gain the opinions of patients, carers and staff.
The palliative and end of life care priority setting project is a collaboration led by Marie Curie which includes the Medical Research Council, Macmillan and the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research to name a few.
Its aim is to gain a society view of what the priorities are for the care and support we can provide to people who are in their last year(s) of life.
The project set out to identify the questions patients, carers, family members and professionals wanted to know about palliative and end of life care and to prioritise them. Understanding the priorities will help us direct money and time towards answering these questions first.
1,400 people participated in the first phase of identifying the questions about care and support they would like answers to. These questions have been grouped and categorised into 83 issues, ranging from accessing services, organisation of care, managing symptoms and medications. The next stage is to prioritise these questions.
Now the project is asking for public support to gather the views of as many people as possible, from all areas of society (patients, carers, their family and professionals). It provides an opportunity to directly influence the future research into care, support and treatment for people in the last year(s) of their life.
Within the questionnaire, participants are asked to consider if each issue is a very low priority; low priority; high priority; or very high priority. There is also an option for no opinion.
The website for the questionnaire is www.palliativecarepsp.org.uk.
