Discussing PPOD during the final hospital admission v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Discussing preferred place of death (PPOD) during the final hospital admission; exploring the experience of these discussions from the perspective of bereaved informal care givers and staff.
IRAS ID
301343
Contact name
Zoe Booth
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Northumbria at Newcastle
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, days
Research summary
A vital aspect of achieving quality in end-of-life care is encouraging patients to discuss where they would like to be cared for and die. Sometimes, this planning and preparation is done in advance and unnecessary hospital admissions can be appropriately avoided. However, people with advanced disease are very often admitted to hospital just before they die for a variety of reasons and may not have had an opportunity to discuss their wishes and preferences. As it is seen to be important to ask the question about preferred place of death these discussions often happen during the last admission in the patients' final few days or weeks. Clinical experience suggests that these discussions are often complex and challenging and there may be limited realistic options regarding places of death for health care professionals to offer patients and their carers. Currently there is a lack of understanding of these discussions, and it has been identified that more research is needed to explore what it is like to be involved in these discussions.
My study aims to discover more about the experience of taking part in these discussions from the perspective of bereaved care givers and staff so that we can strengthen our understanding of this area of end-of-life care. This study is anticipated to develop new knowledge and theory regarding preferred place of death discussions that may have implications for the quality of end-of-life care.REC name
West of Scotland REC 5
REC reference
23/WS/0057
Date of REC Opinion
2 May 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion