The Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) will today begin a national audit of end-of-life care - the first of its kind in the EU – in order to support hospitals in their efforts to develop services for dying patients and their families.

The national audit, which will take place over 2008 and 2009, will provide a detailed picture of the quality of end-of-life services in our hospitals. It will be completed in September 2009 and is likely to be repeated in two years time in a bid to measure progress.

The audit has been devised by the IHF’s Hospice friendly Hospitals (HfH) Programme, which was launched last year and aims to put hospice principles into hospital practice.

Some 24 acute hospitals have indicated that they would like to participate in the audit, which will take place in three phases. The first to take part are Cork University Hospital, St Joseph’s Hospital in Trim, Co Meath and the Royal Hospital Donnybrook in Dublin.

While the vast majority of Irish people want to die at home, more than 60% die in some sort of hospital, with 40% dying in acute hospitals.

In 2004, the first national survey on death and dying revealed that over 80% believed that hospital care for people who were dying or terminally ill needed improvement, and nearly 40% believed it needed urgent or considerable improvement.

“The audit will require considerable involvement from participating hospitals. It will take place over four months in each hospital with 50 deaths being examined in detail. Bereaved relatives will be contacted three months after the death of a loved one and invited to take part in the audit,” Shelagh Twomey, deputy manager of the HfH Programme explained.

Ms Twomey added that each hospital would receive a confidential report on all aspects of its end-of-life services after the audit, including comparative data with other hospitals. This will be useful in understanding the specific issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure a quality service, she said.

“The experience of the HfH Programme is that hospital management and staff share public concerns about end-of-life care and are constantly seeking to make improvements. This audit is an ambitious undertaking of national importance. While caring for the dying is actually a core activity of hospitals, no audit has ever been undertaken in Ireland,” she added.

A national report will also be provided for the HSE, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), the Department of Health and Children, and other State bodies concerned with the planning and quality of health and social services.

In addition to the audit, the HfH Programme is also developing a comprehensive framework of standards around end-of-life care in hospitals – a move that is being supported by HIQA.

Actor Gabriel Byrne launched the first set of standards in June, and a second set is currently being drafted.

The HfH Programme is an initiative of the IHF in partnership with the HSE.

For more information, see the IHF's website at www.hospice-foundation.ie