Ten community hospitals in Cornwall have become the first in the UK to receive a major national award recognising the quality of care they are providing their patients as they approach the end of their lives.

All ten of the hospitals, operated by Penninsula Community Health, will be presented with the Quality Hallmark Awards by Suzanne Jones of the Community Hospitals Association, at the National Gold Standards Framework Centre (GSF) annual conference in London on Friday 26 September.

Having completed the GSF Community Hospitals Training Programme, the ten were assessed by a panel of independent experts. The community hospitals demonstrated that they were well placed to meet their patients’ needs at this most vulnerable time, helping them communicate their wishes and coordinate their care. The hospitals have demonstrated the ability to better plan patients’ care with GPS and District Nurses, enabling many to return home quickly when this is what they have wanted.

Pam Butler, sister at Lamorna Ward, Camborne Redruth Community Hospital, said: “GSF has really helped us formalise what we were doing already, improving our coordination and communication. For patients, this means we now engage in more detailed conversations with them about the care they want and where they want to receive it and share these wishes with our health colleagues in the community, which means everyone is working in unison. For the staff, it has helped us approach difficult conversations with more confidence, develop closer working ties with fellow health professionals and take satisfaction that we are delivering more personalised care.”

The GSF Centre is the UK’s largest provider of training for health and social care staff, enabling them to help people live well as they approach the end of their lives. The Community Hospitals training programme has been developed to enhance care within the community in planning and implementing care for those patients thought to be in the last 6-12 months of life. The GSF Centre is already used widely in GP surgeries, care homes and acute hospitals.

Jeremy Mann, Staff Nurse at Newquay Hospital, said: "The most important thing GSF has done for us is to ensure that everyone involved in a patient's care is singing from the same hymn sheet, in accordance with their needs and wishes."

Guiding these Cornish community hospitals to their awards is especially pleasing for GSF founder and National Clinical Director Professor Keri Thomas who has longstanding persoinal ties with Cornwall.

“Cornwall has a proud tradition of community hospitals and my family has been connected with the county for almost 100 years so I am doubly delighted to see these hospitals putting good care for vulnerable patients at the heart of what they do and being rewarded for doing so,” said Prof Thomas.

She added: “This year’s GSF Accredited Community Hospitals have demonstrated real improvements and show us what is possible and achievable in hospital care. They have made a real difference for their patients and families and shown that high quality care can be delivered for all people nearing the end of life. Most notably, they now achieve early identification rates of over 30% (some of the first hospitals in the UK to do this, in line with recent research evidence), offer Advance Care Planning discussions to all these patients and are able to work well with GPs and the community to support a more proactive approach. They are national trailblazers and are an inspiration to us all.”