North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust has teamed up with North Yorkshire County Council, City of York Council, other health organisations, carers and patients to help uphold patients’ final wishes.

The End of Life Care Strategy aims to improve experiences for patients (and their families and carers) who are nearing the end of their lives by enabling care to be delivered more effectively in a setting that best upholds the wishes of the patient.

A key theme of the strat-egy is to ensure that services are delivered in partnership by statutory and voluntary organisations. It focuses on areas such as effective information recording and sharing, improving access to care equipment and the provision of educational resources to support carers in managing patient’s nearing the end of their life.

Christine Ward, a nurse consultant in adult palliative care, said: “The end of a person’s life is a highly emotional and difficult time for them and those around them. Working together, in partnership with other health and social care organisations, will ensure that we can streamline resources to provide the very best standard of care whilst giving the patient real options for where they spend the last weeks or months of their life.

“Historically, patients nearing the end of their life have had restricted options for adequate support at home, which at times has resulted in admission to hospital or a care home for the last days or weeks of their life. This new integrated approach to providing end of life care will give patients a more personalised standard of care, which can be provided at home or in the community.”

Each year there are between 7,500 and 8,000 deaths in North Yorkshire and York. The 2006 figure for Scarborough, Whitby, Rye-dale area was 736. This number relates only to the deaths caused from the five main causes of death, which are heart and circulatory disease, cancer, respiratory disease, neurological problems and dementias. The main cause of death in the area is cancer.