Evaluation of an end-of-life teaching programme for unregistered domiciliary care staff

With increased focus on people being supported to die at home, and increased numbers of people predicted to die in the coming years in the UK, it is recognised that domiciliary carers need to be trained and supported to give end-of-life care. Recent reports suggest that this is not happening.

To introduce and evaluate a training programme to upskill unregulated domiciliary care agency staff and integrate them into the palliative care teams, supporting registered nurses in caring for end-of-life patients.

A training course was devised and implemented. This report covers the first 3 years of running the course, and evaluates the difference that it made to the first 210 recipients' ability and confidence in delivering end-of-life care, using a mixed-methods approach.

Pre- and post-course confidence questionnaires, evaluations, post-course testimonials, and managers' comments all identified improvements in knowledge, skills and attitudes following training. Agency policies were re-written with up-to-date guidance on how to respond to death in the community.

This article demonstrates that this model is effective in achieving its aims.