Blog post: International Collaborative Summer School
The International Collaborative for best care for the dying person Summer School took place on 13th and 14th May 2024. The international group were hosted by Cudeca Hospice (Malaga, Spain) in their state of the art educational centre. The school was hosted by Dr Marisa Martín Roselló and her team who were superb hosts, supporting learning, discussion and collaboration in the warm sunshine. The international collaborative brings together a global group of leading thinkers, practitioners and researchers, who share a vision for a world where all people experience as good death as an integral part of their individual life, supported by the very best personalised care.
Dr Rosie Bronnert, (bottom right, blue top), Dr Mary Miller (bottom right, red cardigan) and Jess Moss (bottom right, white top) representing the NHS Benchmarking Network
Day 1:
Jess’s poster was accepted for presentation: ‘Learning from loved ones’ involvement in the re-design of the National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL)’.
Dr Marisa Martín Roselló and Mr Yusuf Hamied welcomed the group to the summer school 2024. Professor John Ellershaw outlined the programme for the school and outlined the work of the international collaborative. Dr Agnes Van der Heide led the plenary, discussing key findings of the EU Horizon iLIVE project.
The NHS Benchmarking team participated in the ‘Benchmarking in the Care of the Dying’ workshops, one of four workshop streams that ran throughout the day. The team were invited to present on each of the three themes:
Different models of benchmarking for care of the dying across the world: Dr Mary Miller
Quality improvement in the context of national benchmarking: Dr Rosie Bronnert
Perceptions of staff and relatives on care of the dying person from use of questionnaires: Jess Moss
The NHS Benchmarking team were privileged to showcase NACEL as one of the two major global success stories.
Day 2:
Dr Marisa Martín Roselló welcomed the delegates back for a second day. We heard about palliative care in intensive care departments in low resource settings in the plenary before moving on to invited oral presentations. Dr Mary Miller spoke about the ED results from the NHS Benchmarking pilot of the redesigned case note review (2023). Three other presenters discussed work from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany.
The NHS Benchmarking team participated in workshops looking at global research on benchmarking. Dr Claudia Fisher presented a very interesting systematic review looking at the impact of benchmarking on improving care.
Dr Mary Miller presented the current research outputs of NACEL and a vision for the future. Delegates worked in collaboration to pull together an outline proposal for EU funding – a call for applications is awaited with eagerness! The school drew to an end with reflections and learning led by Professor John Ellershaw.
As well as providing an opportunity to showcase the work of NACEL and NHS Benchmarking, the team met colleagues seeking to introduce benchmarking (Malta, Iceland and South America), learned about international practice (Sweden and Australia) and learned about the vision to improve care at the end of life by measuring practice and using knowledge to undertake quality improvement. The summer school was a fabulous networking and learning experience – now to decode and capture my notes and reflections.