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Background:Death anxiety may interfere with health care workers' (HCW) relationship with patients and their families.Aims:Evaluate an intervention to address death anxiety and improve HCW skills dealing with patients/families in palliative and end-of-life care.Design:Quasi-experimental mixed methods approach with a pre-test/post-test design.Participants:208 HCWs receiving the intervention and working in end-of-life care, in and out of palliative care units, were invited to answer quantitative and qualitative questionnaires. In the end, 150 returned with quantitative answers and of these, 94 with qualitative answers as well. Additionally, out of the 150 participants, 26 were recruited for interview.Results:Pre-and post-test results revealed a significant reduction in levels of death anxiety, an increase in existential wellbeing, and a significant improvement in HCWs' perception of the quality of their helping relationship skills with patients/families. Content analysis provided an understanding of the difficulties experienced by the HCWs and the positive impact of the intervention.Conclusion:An intervention to address death anxiety and help relationship skills can reduce the use of avoidance mechanisms and improve HCW self-perceived psycho-existential support to patients/families.

Over recent years there have been several political imperatives in the UK directed toward children's palliative care and ensuring that services are high-quality, coordinated, family-centred, and able to meet the needs of children with complex disabilities. In addition, in 2010 the health and social care regulation authority in England—the Care Quality Commission (CQC)—aligned hospices with regulation and inspection requirements. This context has acted as a driver for the creation of effective education and training to ensure a skilled and expert workforce. Against this backdrop, this paper describes a project to develop a learning and development strategy for Children's Hospices across London (CHaL). CHaL educators worked with a research team to develop a unified strategy that was based on evidence of good practice, embedded in required CQC outcomes, and validated with a wider audience. The resultant strategy contains a set of four key learning and development principles that are applicable and transferable across different hospices.

Background:Standards, benchmarking, and audits are integral to quality monitoring in health and social service provision. Recent policy in the UK National Health Service dictating the need for increased consumer involvement necessitates that service users have significant input into the composition of standards for quality of care.Background:Standards, benchmarking, and audits are integral to quality monitoring in health and social service provision. Recent policy in the UK National Health Service dictating the need for increased consumer involvement necessitates that service users have significant input into the composition of standards for quality of care.

People with incontinence problems are particularly vulnerable to feeling a loss of dignity. A recent study on dignity in care settings explored the factors important to residents in maintaining dignity during continence care.

Undertaking projects with European partners is an enterprising and rewarding activity, where societies can start to learn how to transfer knowledge and take advantage of best practices to further the benefits to health and social care service users. However, this can also be a challenging experience, more so when there is scanty guidance about the best way to conduct European partnership research. Using an on-going study of integrated care for older persons as an example (the PROCARE project), this paper provides an account of the methodological strengths and challenges of the qualitative approach used. It suggests that factors assisting a rigorous approach include sound and inclusive coordination, a strong research design, the construction of universally acceptable selection criteria, detailed interview schedules, and a transversal approach to data analysis