Government palliative and end of life care websites
UK governments
England:
Department of Health provides fairly comprehensive websites: end of life strategy website. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/IntegratedCare/Endoflifecare/index.htm
NHS end of life care website: http://www.endoflifecareforadults.nhs.uk/eolc/
Northern Ireland
No end of life or palliative care website at the Northern Ireland Office website, but a search for palliative care on the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety will lead to some documents:
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/index.htm
Scotland
As with NI, there appears to be no website on palliative and/or end-of-life care on the Scottish government website; searching for these topics (aside from the usual results on things like end of life vehicles) produces a fairly large number of documents on social care issues generally; this seems to suggest that the Scots see palliative care as much more of a social care issue than the London-based Department of Health, which is highly medical in its orientation. There is a national standard for hospice care (2005):
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/46910/0025661.pdf
to which there are 2007 revisions:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/care/17652/RevHospice#top
The Scottish government website on health and community care is:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health
Don’t stay there too long or you get a really irritating video download about 60 years of the NHS.
Wales
Again no specific website; NHS Wales website, connects to the Wales government and National Assembly; a search for ‘palliative care’ offers a range of documents ‘end of life care’ only one:
http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/health/nhswales/?lang=en (also available in Welsh).
Commentary: All this suggests that, compared with the well-resourced England DH site, there is no coordinated information about end-of-life and palliative care on government website, although interesting documents may be found; see my selected documents post.



September 29th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Pleased to see this-have just spent an hour looking up palliatuve care strategies esp around breakthrough cancer pain in wales and found nothing-this re-assures me there isnt much going on in wales in this area, unlike Scotland/england at moment
Thanks