OUR HUMANITY is reflected in how we care for the dying. And encouragingly, at a time of often tottering health and social services, there have been some positive developments in how we treat people in their final days and succour their families in the aftermath of bereavement. Acute and community hospitals have embraced the second phase of the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme, an Irish Hospice Foundation venture which is driving change in how we deal with dying and death.
Twenty-three acute hospitals have signed on to develop end-of-life care plans. Each acute hospital has also set up a core group of clinical, administrative and support services staff, as well as a public interest representative, to advance its programme. Senior acute hospital personnel will exchange information and promote the best in end-of-life care and a community hospital network has been established in the greater Dublin area.
On top of that, increased communications training, co-operation between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Programme in developing good practice, and the recently launched Ethical Framework for End-of-Life Care, demonstrate a new and vital focus on dying issues.
Such advances were reinforced earlier this week with the announcement of a ‘Design and Dignity’ grants scheme for minor capital projects to improve conditions for dying people and their loved ones. Some €250,000 from the National Lottery and €500,000 from the HSE should give impetus to the Irish Hospice Foundation’s new Challenge Fund which aims to match this official money.
Research shows that outcomes for patients, families and staff improve in good physical environments such as colourful and bright one-patient rooms. This could become the norm when hospitals that succeed in getting funding create projects that can be used as models throughout the hospital system. Ward spaces could be altered to create single rooms or areas of privacy. Other priorities should include rooms for relatives, and overnight rest and refreshment facilities, corridor enclaves for informal but private conversations, and refurbishment of mortuary rooms.
Minister for Health Mary Harney, the HSE, the Hospice Foundation and actor Gabriel Byrne who supports the Challenge Fund scheme, deserve credit for co-operating on an issue so integral to the way we die and of such shared importance to us all.