Facilitating person-centred after-death care: unearthing assumptions, tradition and values through practice development

• Main Author: Barbara Anderson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Foundation of Nursing Studies 2017-05-01
• Series: International Practice Development Journal
• Subjects: Practice development; person-centred practice; after-death care; language; culture change; policy
• Online Access: https://www.fons.org/library/journal/volume7-issue1/article6

Background: West Park Healthcare Centre, a complex continuing care and rehabilitation setting in Ontario, Canada has implemented practice development as one method of facilitating person-centred, evidence-informed practices. West Park is planning the construction of a new hospital, with a target construction timeline of 2018-21. Practice development is an internationally established transformation model (Manley et al., 2008) that can breathe life into the necessary but often burdensome process of policy revision in healthcare settings. Aims: The aim of this article is to share how practice development was used to review and revise West Park’s after-death care policy. The process entailed an integration of a broad span of evidence and intentional challenge of ‘habit-based’ ways. Such an approach to policy revision is needed if practice leaders are to use evidence to help achieve transformative changes in practice. Conclusions: Our after death-care policy involved processes that were antithetical to our shared vision for person-centred practices. Unquestioned, longstanding traditional approaches to after-death care needed to be questioned. Through the transformative journey at personal and organisational levels of applying practice development principles to this process, we were successful in bringing forward a policy that supports end-of-life plans of care, choice and person-centred after-death care practices and language. Implications for practice: • Healthcare organisations can review after-death care by exploring different sources of evidence, including research, clinical experience, local audit and patient experience, to challenge taken-for-granted practices • Consultation with funeral professionals will be valuable in terms of establishing what they do and do not need from a healthcare organisation • Fellow patients do not need to be ‘protected’ from the after-death care process and appreciate having a voice on how it is carried out • Respect for language, religious and cultural issues is part of offering a ‘sympathetic presence’ in after-death care practices