St Luke's Six Steps for Quality End of Life Care

St Luke's Hospice Plymouth believes that no one should die alone in pain or distress.

How someone is cared for at the end of their life can remain with relatives and loved ones for a long time, so it is important to get the care right. All staff who care for people at the end of life should be trained with the knowledge and skills to ensure that the end-of-life care people receive maintains their dignity, choice, and comfort. People should be able to die in a place of their choosing, and their end-of-life wishes should be known by those caring for them.

St Luke's Hospice Plymouth has been providing training to local care homes and domiciliary care agencies. The Six Steps + programme does not hold any inspectorate authority such as the CQC, so it does not monitor or regulate day-to-day care; however, it can verify that at least two members of staff have successfully completed the training to become End of Life Champions.

Their role is to promote end-of-life care best practices within the home or care agency and to ensure end-of-life policies are in line with the Six Steps + Criteria. To maintain the Six Steps + verification, the care home or agency are required to verify annually that they have kept these policies and standards up to date.

To find out more about the Six Steps + Criteria, read the documents that are available in the download section.

Six Steps + Verified End-of-Life Care Providers

Other helpful Information about end-of-life care

It is important that people know what your end-of-life choices and wishes are; this is called Advanced Care Planning and can include decisions about treatments you definitely do not want to have. But this can only happen if families and carers begin to talk to each other about the way they would like to be cared for at the end of their lives.

Read about starting the End of Life conversation

For queries about the six-step programme or any other training workshops or courses, please contact the St Luke's Education Team on 01752 314350.