Research at St Catherine's Hospice - St Catherine's Hospice

At St Catherine’s Hospice, we’re leaders in helping people when life comes full circle and educating professionals in our field.

You can trust us to deliver pioneering standards of care at our hospice buildings and in people’s own homes, but we know there’s always more we can do.

Would you like to take part in research?

We want to make sure that the care we give is the best it can be, and so from time to time offer the people we care for the opportunity to take part in research studies.

Our research looks at how we can improve St Catherine’s physical, practical, emotional and spiritual care for people affected by a terminal illness. So far we have worked with patients, carers and staff to better understand issues including:

What really matters to people about their care at the end of their life
How often people with cancer get oral symptoms, like mouth pain or a dry mouth
How illness affects people’s sleep

All of our research is ethical and robust as we follow strict guidelines including data protection and confidentiality principles.

How do I get involved in research?

Whilst we are caring for you, we may invite you to take part in a relevant study. Alternatively, if you would like to, please ask any member of the team about our current research projects and how to get involved

We also work with our academic and healthcare partners and are supporting the following research projects. If you would like to get involved in any of these, please either sign up via the links below, or ask a member of the team who will be happy to help.

TONiC

TONiC is a national study examining the factors that influence quality of life in patients with neurological conditions. It is one of the largest studies on quality of life in neurological conditions ever performed in the UK.

We hope that TONiC will have a significant and positive impact on the lives of all patients that suffer from neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Motor Neurone disease, regardless of symptoms, stage of illness, age or social status.

If you would like to provide your opinion on quality of life in MS or MND you can get in touch with the TONiC team on tonic@thewaltoncentre.nhs.uk

Join Dementia Research

Dementia affects 850,000 people in the UK. The only way to beat the condition is through
research.

Join Dementia Research is a nationwide online and telephone service that makes it easier for people to register their interest in volunteering for dementia research studies. Anyone, with or without dementia, can register as a volunteer or sign-up for someone else, providing it is in their best interest.

Once you’ve registered, you can see which studies your information matches to, and can also express an interest in finding out more about studies, with no obligation. Current research studies range from clinical trials of new treatments to surveys identifying what works in improving the quality of life of people with dementia.

National Recognition

We’re already recognised for our outstanding work, including being acknowledged as one of the top three teams in the country at the national Infection Prevention Society Awards (IPS) for the innovative work we’ve done around preventing infection at our hospice.

Sharing Our Expertise

We promote our work with other end of life professionals by sharing practice and making presentations at prestigious UK and international palliative care conferences.

You can see examples of our recent presentations and research below.

NETNEP 5th International Nurse Education Conference, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands 2014

Fostering hospice staff engagement in learning using a facilitative approach

10th Palliative Care Congress, Harrogate 2014

Can electronic evaluation of education demonstrate benefit to practice?

Implementation of a small, portable, opiate conversion guide for staff in an independent hospice

Help the Hospices Conference, Bournemouth 2013

Hospice respite: moving forwards not backwards

Volunteers working with patients

Significant Event Analysis in a hospice setting

Developing Audit

Re-designing how patient medicines information is presented on discharge

Morphine and other opioid painkillers for moderate to severe pain

Piloting the design and delivery of a five-day course on end of life care for people with dementia

Developing an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in hospice care a workforce transformation project

9th NAPCE Conference ‘Palliative Care Education: From Vision to Reality’ 2013

Electronic evaluation of palliative care education

13th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care, Prague 2013

Introducing an evaluation framework to measure the impact of education on end of life care

Education, Training and Development

We help our staff stay up to date by providing education and supporting personal development to make sure we’re continuing to provide people with the highest quality care, and we educate other professionals, as we know providing everyone in our local community with excellent end of life care isn’t something we can do alone. Our courses are available here.