Marie Curie response to the Royal College of Nursing new guidance on end of life care and nutrition and hydration

In response to the Royal College of Nursing new guidance - Getting it right every time - Fundamentals of nursing care at the end of life - Dee Sissons, Director of Nursing for Marie Curie, said:

“We welcome the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) guidance for nurses who are providing care to people at the end of life. Nurses play a critical role in ensuring that people with a terminal illness are able to live as well as possible in the place of their choice. As the RCN’s figures show, more than half of the nurses it surveyed about end of life issues were providing care for someone at the end of life at least once a week.
 
What we know from our own report published today, Triggers for palliative care, is that a lack of training is a real barrier to people who are terminally ill getting the care and support they need. The RCN’s own research confirms this, with 25% of nurses it surveyed saying that they had no specific training, either before they qualified or since they had started work, on providing care to people at the end of their lives.
 
With 110,000 people missing out on palliative care each year, this lack of training simply is not good enough. We want to work with the RCN, the NHS, the Government and other partners to ensure that training for health and social care professionals about how to recognise and attend to a person’s palliative care needs is mandatory.”