Identifying how much of community nurses’ daily work involves end‑of‑life care and whether safety‑critical visits are being deferred or cancelled, providing essential evidence to guide decisions by commissioners, managers and policymakers.
Why is the research needed?
Policy makers and commissioners of services don’t currently have a clear picture of how much end-of-life care community nurses provide or whether important work is left undone or deferred. Understanding this is essential to make sure timely, patient-centred and safe care can be provided at home.
What are we doing?
We are carrying out a UK‑wide survey asking community nurses about the end‑of‑life care they provide each day and whether any of their work is left undone. The survey will show what proportion of their daily workload involves caring for people in the last year of life and reveal the extent to which this work is being deferred or cancelled.
How are we working with communities, services and organisations?
We are working closely with community nurses through the Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing Research Forum, involving them as active partners throughout the study. Community nursing colleagues from across the UK are helping analyse findings and interpreting the relevance of the findings for practice and policy. This approach brings in voices that are often under-represented in research and helps community nurses to become more research active.
What will the impact and benefits of this research be?
The study will help improve planning and resourcing of community nursing services across the UK and beyond. This information will help to inform the decisions of service commissioners and managers, policy makers and future research. Our findings will support timely, person-centred and safe end-of-life care at home.
What do we have planned for knowledge mobilisation and implementation?
Our study directly answers questions national policy makers have about how much end-of-life care work community nurses do and what work is left undone. We are sharing findings with national policy makers in the four nations, and through national networks, conferences, webinars and professional forums. We are shaping messages for policy and practice audiences and developing wider outputs including a short video on the findings and their implications.
Our multi-pronged and targeted approach to knowledge mobilisation is helping ensure the research reflects practice and leads to real improvements in workforce design and capacity.
Related papers, outputs and resources
Who is involved?
- Dr Ben Bowers, University of Cambridge
- Joodi Mourhli, University of Cambridge
- Dr Melissa Fielding, University of Cambridge
- Professor Stephen Barclay, University of Cambridge
- Nicola Zolnhofer, University of Cambridge
Get in contact
Email Dr Ben Bowers or Joodi Mourhli at bb527@cam.ac.uk or jmm274@cam.ac.uk.
