Holistic Palliative Care at Foxburrow Grange
At Foxburrow Grange we recognise that the palliative care stage is often the hardest stage of care planning for families and choosing your preferred place of care (PPC) when receiving palliative treatment is not easy. Here at Foxburrow Grange we will always endeavour to support and empathise with the individual and their family when making these decisions.
We work closely with our residents, their loved ones and key healthcare professionals, to ensure that communication, compassion, comfort, choice and control of symptoms are at the forefront of the care provided. We ensure our residents’ personal choices in relation to their care and end of life plans are respected and, by sympathetically planning in advance, we discuss everyone’s wishes in an open and honest way, ensuring that those we care for have the very best quality of life.
End of Life Care - Gold Standards Framework
At Foxburrow Grange we are working towards accreditation within the Gold Standards Framework (GSF), for end of life care. This involves undertaking extensive training and providing evidence that we provide a high quality of care using the GSF tools.
GSF is a framework, which can be used as a tool to assess and deliver care for end of life. It is not only a tool for end of life care but to measure the quality of living well.
It promotes discussion on personal choices and how each person would want to be cared for and their wishes of where they would like to be cared for at the end of their life. This is imperative to residents, as when they move to Foxburrow Grange, they have a home for life and do not need to move to another home when they are no longer able to care for themselves. This is also important to families and relatives, as some residents cannot communicate and it is essential that they are cared for by staff who are familiar with their mode of communication, and who they are comfortable with.
GSF gives more structure to planning for end of life. It assists to develop advanced care plans with the individual and their family. As part of the process, individuals and families can choose their preferred place for end of life care.
GSF also allows better collaboration with other professionals. E.g., there is a coding system when residents’ health deteriorates, for years, months, weeks and days. This alerts the G.P. to visit the individual more frequently, it gives guidance to staff when to contact the G.P. palliative team and out of hours care etc. This also ensures the residents’ symptoms are controlled and pain management is in place.
GSF also reduces inappropriate hospital admissions, which may cause unnecessary stress to the individual and their family.
