Symptom control outcomes in a community palliative care nursing team

Measuring outcomes of care is an essential component of clinical governance. This article describes a pragmatic approach to auditing symptom control outcomes in a community specialist palliative care nursing team. Using a palliative care assessment tool, it demonstrates that the team make a positive difference to the patient's experience of most symptoms and a plan for further development of practice is formulated in response to the results of the audit. Unexpected outcomes reveal some of the realities of community specialist palliative care and demonstrate that audit is worthwhile despite some of the pitfalls in this area of practice.