Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) lacked robust information about deaths. For example: Where do patients die? Which services are involved? How are they reviewed and reflected on?
In response, CDHB developed an audit tool, refined its categories of death (based on list from Royal Brisbane Hospital), and adjusted the tool to suit community deaths. Ultimately, the tool aims provide a consistent and structured approach for retrospectively analysing death and is designed to capture physical, spiritual, cultural and emotional aspects of patient death, particularly expected deaths.
Thus far, the highest and lowest scores have been analysed (higher score better) and locations of deaths have been identified. Future steps for CDHB include: further testing and refining of the audit tool to ensure that it captures the key aspects of a death and determining the break point score for good vs bad death. Once tool is fully validated, the goal is to use the tool for all deaths within CDHB, with the ultimate goal of being able to measure the quality of death for patients who die in Canterbury.
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