Role of healthcare assistant in out-of-hours community palliative care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Contribution of the healthcare assistant in out-of-hours hospice care: Qualitative Case Studies.
IRAS ID
291777
Contact name
Felicity Hasson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Ulster University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 30 days
Research summary
Most of the last year of a person’s life is spent at home with some care being delivered during out of normal working hours periods such as evenings, night-time and weekends. Out-of-hours palliative care at home can be delivered by healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants. Healthcare assistants (HCAs) deliver most of the bedside patient care by helping qualified nurses. They are not required to be trained to any national standard and are usually only provided with informal job-related training. Research suggests that HCAs support family members, provide most of the personal care to patients at home and play a key role in delivering care to the dying. However, their role and influence on the delivery of out-of-hours palliative care is unknown but may help patients to remain at home.
This research is part of a larger research project. The current phase of research aims to better understand the role of the HCA (within out-of-hours care), and comprises four stages:
1. An examination of hospice internal documents (including documents about their out-of-hours service provision and the role of HCAs) in order to build a picture of the background of the hospice's out-of-hours services.
2. Interviews with healthcare assistants to explore their background, their role, training, support and other aspects of their job that are relevant to the study.
3.We will interview other hospice staff (such as nurses and managers), and ask about their input to out-of-hours services and how they interact with healthcare assistants.
4. We will interview patients and carers to find out about their experiences of using out-of-hours services, and the healthcare assistants contribution to enabling them to stay at home.
REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/PR/0378
Date of REC Opinion
13 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion