Caring for patients dying at home from heart failure: a new way of working

This article explores the difficult journey that heart failure patients frequently experience when trying to access palliative care. It describes how a team of Macmillan and heart failure nurse specialists attempted to address the problem using the specialist role to effect change. Individual and group learning needs were identified and addressed while the use of reflective practice and group working helped the nurses to manage and implement change. This project, with management support, empowered the specialist teams to think creatively about nursing practice and improve patient care. It has encouraged working with clinical nurse specialists from other disciplines, thus avoiding a narrowness of outlook. Although this project initially focused on a small number of patients, it has enabled the teams to become established in partnership working; the collaborative approach to providing palliative care for end-stage cardiac failure patients has since continued to grow and flourish. It is hoped that, in the future, further studies can take place to gain more detailed information from patients and their families about how partnership working can continue to meet the needs of this group.