Clinical audit is now an integral part of the practice of doctors, nurses, social workers and others who work in hospitals or the community. However, in palliative care, where quality is paramount, audit has been hampered by the lack of sensitive methods and measures. This study brings together methods and experiences in practising audit from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada to show how audit in this crucial area of care can be provided.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

Clinical audit is at the heart of clinical governance. Provides the mechanisms for reviewing the quality of everyday care provided to patients with common conditions like asthma or diabetes. Builds on a long history of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals reviewing case notes and seeking ways to serve their patients better. Addresses the quality issues systematically and explicitly, providing reliable information. Can confirm the quality of clinical services and highlight the need for improvement. Provides clear statements of principle about clinical audit in the NHS.

Day care centres are growing important in palliative care, providing a variety of services from out-patient clinics to art therapy classes. They are proving to be a cost-effective way of providing care, and of accustomising patients to the hospice environment before full time admittance. They can also improve quality of life by giving patients and carers time away from one another. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the current philosophy, patterns and policies of pallaitive day care. It places emphasis on the need to evaluate performance in palliative day care and describes in detailk audit, health economics, research and their associated problems and pitfalls.

Written by a Macmillan lecturer, this comprehansive handbook demonstrates the application of theory to good practice, offering practical guidance to anyone involved with the care of dying people and their families.

Helps healthcare professionals perform clinical audits the 'right' way so that clinical audits actually result in measurable benefits for patients, staff or others. It includes tools, methods and ideas for each step in the clinical audit process.

Editors’ Preface Introduction 1. Introduction to palliative care 2. Essential concepts 3. Generic assessment in palliative care 4. Anxiety and depression 5. Breathlessness 6. Fatigue 7. Pain 8. Quality improvement Glossary Abbreviations

One of a series of pocketbooks designed to provide assimilable information on common medical issues. The concise texts are enhanced by tables and diagrams summarizing the essential information. This particular volume deals with medical audit.

User involvement has become an important part of health policy initiatives during the last decade, but how realistic is the concept and do all users want to be involved? This book brings the voices of people with serious illness, and those caring for them, into debate about how far health and social care services can reflect the views of users. Providing an overview of the literature on user involvement, the book looks at the policy and professional context within which user involvement is undertaken, in particular user involvement in pallative care. The authors discuss two key concepts - palliative care and empowerment - and analyse the role of self-help groups and new information and communication technologies in this context. The book focuses on the detailed narratives of people coping with three life-threatening illnesses - cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease - and in this way the views and experiences of the 'user' are brought into play to critique current policy and practice. Addressing a current health services issue in a refreshingly critical manner the text challenges the assumption that user involvement is either easy to achieve or that it is necessarily welcomed by all parties. It will be valuable reading for students on health studies courses, health professionals and policy makers in health and social care.