Conditions
Our objective is to ensure that everyone who needs it has access to high quality palliative and end of life care regardless of their diagnosis.
We currently have established the following groups of professionals and people with personal experience to drive and inform our condition-specific policy work and publications:
Cancer
The group is chaired by Kate Heaps, NCPC Trustee and Chief Executive of Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice
Recent work has included: Supporting NCPC's conference on 24/7 care held in February 2011, exploring specialist palliative care inpatient admission criteria (See Are You There? NCPC 2011)
Related: Macmillan Cancer Support, who are a member of our Cancer Group, have produced an informative overview of palliative and end of life care and cancer which can be viewed here.
Chronic Respiratory Conditions
Recently: Written response to the draft COPD Strategy, Difficult Conversations (communicating with people with COPD about the end of life - available via the library)
Dementia
Chaired by Eve Richardson, Chief Executive of NCPC, and Dying Matters coalition
Recently: NCPC presents at the first annual conference of the Dementia Action Alliance, we publish End of Life Quality Markers For Dementia (a joint guide to using quality markers to join up dementia and end of life strategies), The Power of Partnership: Palliative Care in Dementia (View all of our dementia publications in the library)
Heart Failure
Chaired by James Beattie, NCPC Trustee, Consultant Cardiologist and NHS Improvement (Heart Failure) Clinical Lead
Recently: National conference on palliative care for people with heart failure (2012), Findings of the second national survey of heart failure nurses (2011)
Neurological Conditions
Chaired by Vicki Morrey, NCPC Trustee and Director of Nursing at Trinity Hospice
You can read background information on palliative care for people with neurological conditions here.
Recently: a survey of people's experiences in hospital, Partnership working in neurology and end of life care - an article in the British Journal of Neuroscience Nursing.
The group has produced several publications, presentations and free downloads exploring the links between neurology, palliative care and rehabilitation. Check out the NCPC Neurological Conditions Resource to see an overview of our work in this area.
Get involved
Interested in contributing to one of our groups? Please complete and return an Expression of interest form.
Delegates at a NCPC conference discussing end of life care for people with neurological conditions
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A central part of NCPC's work is listening to what people with personal experience of palliative and end of life care have to say. Please help us by sharing your story.