Showing a commitment to choice

摘要

The Great British sense of reserve might have faded in many areas, but for many, death and dying are still awkward subjects for discussion. It is not surprising then that an evaluation of a project aimed at improving end-of-life care for people living in extra care housing, suggests staff often carry this sense of awkwardness into their work. Encouragingly, however, the project also found a great desire among service commissioners, care providers, staff and relatives to ensure that tenants have had the choices they wanted over their end-of-life care and where to die. The service improvement project run by Housing 21 and the National End-of-Iife Care programme, which studied the experiences of tenants in three Housing 21 schemes, revealed that some older people are ready to talk about their final days.