Education and support
Trinity cannot care for everyone in our community but, through education and support for other care providers, we help to raise standards and build confidence and skills so that many more people experience good end of life care. Last year Trinity’s clinical team delivered 6,500 hours of training.
Supporting GPs and district nurses
In line with the Government’s National End of Life Care strategy, Trinity provides training and support to district nurses and GPs to help them gain skills and confidence in delivering end of life care to their patients.
GPs
Funded by Wandsworth Primary Care Trust, Trinity provides a dedicated facilitator to work with the GP practices in the borough to:
Raise awareness of the full range of Trinity’s services and ensure GPs know they can contact Trinity’s community nurses for expert advice on symptom control and practical and emotional issues.
Help to ensure that the end of life care needs of their patients are met – this involves identifying individuals and keeping a register, as well as completing advance care plans recording the preferences of individuals.
Trinity also runs short workshops for GPs designed to work around their busy schedules, and training days.
Supporting district nurses
We work closely with district nurses to strengthen our relationships and explore what really good end of life care looks like and how we can make it happen together.
We also run comprehensive training to help district nurses gain understanding of and confidence in caring for people at the end of life. These involve a mixture of training days at Trinity and workplace learning sessions.
Care homes
Our community-based clinical nurse specialists work with care homes in their areas to provide support and advice and help staff to develop the skills they need to enable their residents to live in their care home until they die and avoid unnecessary and often distressing emergency admissions to hospital.
Care for people with dementia
With local NHS funding Trinity has a specialist dementia care nurse working with GPs and other primary healthcare professionals in Wandsworth. The aim is to ensure that people with dementia have access to the same palliative care service as people with other life-limiting illnesses such as cancer.