Advance care planning virtually during a pandemic

Abstract

Introduction The Marie Curie Virtual Advance Care Planning service was set up in response to the vulnerability of Care Home Residents during the Covid-19 crisis. Aims To evidence that Advance Care Planning can be effective and produce high quality plans even when not done face to face. Method Qualitative interviews with Nurses working on the service. Quantaitive data of numbers of plans created and views by London Ambulance Service. Results It is possible to have meaningful Advance Care Planning conversations virtually and record them electronically to be shared with multiple providers. Conclusion Marie Curie had existing experience of working with Care home staff and GPs to create CMC records. This experience was used to initiate and provide this virtual service across several areas in London involving Care Home residents. and the service has expanded to receive referrals from Hospital Consultants for their out-patients who they believe would benefit from advance care planning and the creation of a CMC record. Impact During the pandemic Marie Curie supported 1,361 new care plans and reviewed 313 existing care plans. The service has returned face to face in Ealing and is still going strong in North East London virtually. We are now looking at supporting Domiciliary Care agencies as well as Care Homes. https://spcare.bmj.com/content/12/Suppl_1/A12.1 This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/