Page 219 - Hospital Authority Convention 2017

Service Enhancement Presentations

F6.4 Enhancing Partnership with Patients and Community 10:45 Room 421

Use of Short Message Service in Bereavement Follow-up in New Territories West Cluster Enhancement of
Community Geriatric Assessment Team Service for End-of-life Care in Residential Care Homes for Elderly
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Lai KM , Au Yeung TW , Mok CK , Kwan YK , Leung KS , Lau ST , Cheng B ,Chan CH , Lam YM , Cheung YL , Ho KL , Kwok HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2017
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WY , Li SS , Kwok LC , Lam CC 2
1 Department of Medicine and Geriatric, Community Care Division, Department of Clinical Oncology, Medical Palliative
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Medicine, Department of Medicine and Geriatric, New Territories West Cluster, Hospital Authority, Hong Kong
Introduction
Enhancement of Community Geriatric Assessment Team Service (CGAT) for end-of-life (EOL) care in Residential Care Home
for the Elderly (RCHEs) residents had been launched in New Territories West Cluster since October 2015. Traditionally,
the condolence messages in bereavement follow-up are conveyed by phone or by mail to the patient’s relatives. Since
our patients are living in RCHEs, we have encoutered a great difficulty in getting the addresses of the patients’ relatives.
Therefore, it is impossible for us to send the condolence messages to them after the death of patients. Besides, the relatives
of deceased patients may be in deep grief or are busy in preparing the funeral for their love ones. It may not be suitable to
phone them on the first few days after the death of their love ones. Therefore, our EOL care team tried to use SMS to express
our sympathy as bereavement follow-up in order to improve EOL bereavement care and support the bereaved relatives.
Objectives
To share the experience and outcome of bereavement follow-up by using SMS for EOL care.
Methodology
Using condolence SMS in our EOL team for bereavement follow-up was initiated in March 2016. Once patient died, a
standardised condolence message through SMS was sent to bereaved relative within three working days and EOL care nurse
would make a phone follow-up within one month. The responsible nurse would tackle any abnormal grief or coping difficulties
during the phone follow-up. Referrals to other professional would be made if needed. The responsible EOL care nurses would
document the content of bereavement care in Clinical Management System for every phone contact.
Results
In 11 months, there were 130 patients died and 124 condolence SMS were sent by nurses to 124 bereaved relatives. All
bereaved relatives had positive feedback on condolence SMS. 24 out of 124 relatives replied to EOL care nurses by SMS.
Besides their appreciation, some of them showed their in-depth feeling on EOL care. In the meantime, EOL care nurses were
also satisfied with the use of condolence SMS as the first bereavement contact to relatives. It improved the efficiency of
bereavement follow-up and played the role of prologue before phone contact with bereaved relatives. Although the EOL team
had encoutered some difficulties at start of this programme, it provides us a great opportunity to learn or explore different
ways in providing best care to our EOL patients in RCHEs and their families. Wednesday, 17 May

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