Abstract project
Background
The Flemish government identifies a need for quality monitoring and quality improvement in advance care planning, palliative care and end-of-life care in Flemish nursing homes. This research project was started to address this need, supporting quality assessment and quality improvement by developing quality indicators for palliative care, advance care planning and end-of-life care in the nursing home context. This project is part of the Flanders Indicator Project, which includes quality indicators on all major quality of care topics in nursing homes.
Goal
The development and testing of a set of quality indicators to measure and improve the most important aspects of quality of advance care planning, palliative care and end-of-life care in nursing homes.
Method
We start from the previously developed Q-PAC indicator set for specialized palliative care settings. We supplement these indicators with input from literature and from interviews with people from the field. An expert panel in which policy, practice and research perspectives are represented validates the indicator set. The set is then tested in 9 participating residential care centers.
