I’ve had these two comments on a post some time ago about end-of-life care in prisons, and although I’ve published them as part of that post, I think comments sometimes get lost to people who come to the blog at other times, so I reproduce them here also as a new post.

Thanks Ros and Kate.

Comment from Ros Cook [Visitor] in response to End-of-life care in prisons

Email: ros.cook@westrminster-pct.nhs.uk • IP: 194.176.105.47 • No Spam Karma

A piece of work that is going on with regard to prisons that I can highlight is the challenging Inequities working group of Action for London. (Action for London is a vision for cancer that is about improving the outcome and the experience of Londoners with cancer.) This working group is currently looking at prisons and specifically the access to cancer screening and the access to end of life care. We have identified considerable challenges to overcome in order to implement equitable end of life care in that setting and will be making recommendations around advanced care planning and workforce development.

Comment from kate heaps [Visitor] in response to End-of-life care in prisons

Email: kateheaps@gbch.org.uk • IP: 84.92.199.81 • No Spam Karma

At Greenwich and Bexley Cottage Hospice we are working with our local prison (Belmarsh) which holds Category A prisoners and therefore has the potential to have more prisoners who are approaching the end of life. The prison officers themselves as well as staff working in the healthcare wing have identified the needs of their inmates/ patients in the area of advance care planning and are well aware of the specific challenges they face. They are also well aware of their own needs around training and suppport supervision. We are by no means there yet, but I was heartened by the attitude that I encountered.