Are we getting it right? A review of end-of-life care in community nursing.

End-of-life (EoL) care is an important role in community nursing. In order to assess a community nursing team's performance in the delivery of EoL care, an evaluation of the EoL care template was undertaken from electronic patient records. Records were assessed against a set of four care priorities across 23 nursing teams in a large acute/community trust. Some 103 electronic patient records were evaluated out of a convenience sample of 110 (94% response rate). The results demonstrated that patients' wishes are being discussed and documented and the priorities of care are being considered with patients needing EoL care. Thus, patients and their families are being supported by the community nursing service, which is communicating with them sensitively and involving patients in the decision-making process. In some cases, the EoL Care Template was not fully completed, which would result in poorer communication across teams and organisations of practice within the wider community. Future action will be focused on continuing to encourage and improve the use of the EoL care template as well as the local online e-learning package for EoL care.