This summary measure includes 7 questions on specialist palliative care access, seven day availability and training. The questions are: Does your hospital have access to a Specialist Palliative Care service?; Is the face to face specialist palliative care service (doctor and/or nurse) available 8 hours a day, 7 days a week?; Is the telephone specialist palliative care service (doctor and/or nurse) available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?; In the period between "audit start date" to "audit end date" was the following available: End of life care training included in Induction Programme; End of life care training included in Mandatory/Priority training; Communication skills training specifically addressing end of life care; Other training in relation to end of life care. The NACEL Staff Reported Measure (SRM) is a survey aimed at members of staff who were most likely to come into contact with dying patients and those important to them.

All 7 questions include a Yes or No response. For the summary score method, the following scores are assigned for each question: Does your hospital have access to a Specialist Palliative Care service? Yes=1, No=1; Is the face to face specialist palliative care service (doctor and/or nurse) available 8 hours a day, 7 days a week? Yes=1, No=zero; Is the telephone specialist palliative care service (doctor and/or nurse) available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?; Yes=1, No=zero; In the period between "audit start date" to "audit end date" was the following available: End of life care training included in Induction Programme, Yes=0.25, No=zero; End of life care training included in Mandatory/Priority training, Yes=0.25, No=zero; Communication skills training specifically addressing end of life care, Yes=0.25, No=zero; Other training in relation to end of life care, Yes=0.25, No=zero.

Hospices are excluded from participating in the National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL) program. All non-NHS acute sites and community hospital providers of adult inpatient care in England and Wales were ineligible to take part in the audit. For this staff-reported summary measure guidance from the audit program was made available to Trusts/hospitals on which staff groups and which locations ought to be covered. Exclusions were maternity and paediatric inpatient staff, and any wards unlikely to have dying people on them.

None

The national and hospital-level summary scores are not stratified. The proportions of response options to the 7 individual data collection questions contained within this summary indicator are stratified by audit year.

Audit participants (based at eligible NHS acute and community hospitals/trusts in England and Wales) were requested to complete the staff-reported survey during the audit data collection period. The survey asked questions pertaining to staff confidence and experience in delivering care at the end of life and was completed for each submission. Staff completed the online questionnaire using a unique link generated for each hospital/site or through a unique QR code.

Public reporting.

National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL) program 2022/23 Report: www.hqip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Ref.-380-NACEL-2022-Summary-Report-Final.pdf National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL) program 2022/23 Appendices and specifications: www.hqip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Ref.-380-NACEL-2022-Appendices-Final.pdf

Unable to locate full technical specification details. Some details and methods for scoring available here in Appendix 16 (page 34-40): www.hqip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Ref.-380-NACEL-2022-Appendices-Final.pdf