Abstract
Background:
The literature contains limited information on the problems faced by dying patients with COVID-19 and the effectiveness of interventions to manage these.
Aim:
The aim of this audit was to assess the utility of our end-of-life care plan, and specifically the effectiveness of our standardised end-of-life care treatment algorithms, in dying patients with COVID-19.
Design:
The audit primarily involved data extraction from the end-of-life care plan, which includes four hourly nursing (ward nurses) assessments of specific problems: patients with problems were managed according to standardised treatment algorithms, and the intervention was deemed to be effective if the problem was not present at subsequent assessments.
Setting/participants:
This audit was undertaken at a general hospital in England, covered the 8 weeks from 16 March to 11 May 2020 and included all inpatients with COVID-19 who had an end-of-life care plan (and died).
Results:
Sixty-one patients met the audit criteria: the commonest problem was shortness of breath (57.5%), which was generally controlled with conservative doses of morphine (10–20 mg/24 h via a syringe pump). Cough and audible respiratory secretions were relatively uncommon. The second most common problem was agitation/delirium (55.5%), which was generally controlled with standard pharmacological interventions. The cumulative number of patients with shortness of breath, agitation and audible respiratory secretions increased over the last 72 h of life, but most patients were symptom controlled at the point of death.
Conclusion:
Patients dying of COVID-19 experience similar end-of-life problems to other groups of patients. Moreover, they generally respond to standard interventions for these end-of-life problems.
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