Clinical Quality Committee

The APM Clinical Quality Committee (6 members) is an advisory committee to the APM Board formed from the amalgamation, in 2019, of the previous Professional Standards and Workforce Committees. The Committee advises the Board and supports the work of the APM on / by:

The promotion of quality improvement activities including audit and service evaluation such as FAMCARE and the audit prize
Sharing of intelligence relating to in Palliative Care and Medicine
Encouraging the use of data, such as dependency scores and outcome measures
Supporting the consultant workforce to provide clinical leadership
Matters pertaining to medical workforce
The processes and standards of medical appraisal and revalidation

Clinical Quality Committee ToR 2020

Dr Ebun Abarshi

Committee Chair

Dr Anna Grundy

Trainee Rep

Dr Andrew Fletcher

SAC Rep

Dr Despoina-Elvira Karakitsiou

FAMCARE Lead

Dr Suzanne Kite

Elected member

Dr Milind Arolker

Elected member

FAMCARE

FAMCARE is an annual audit run by the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) and has been running since 2013. It consists of a survey (FAMCARE 2 tool) which is sent out to recently bereaved relatives or a designated main carer. This survey was developed by Prof Aoun who has given permission for its use by the APM. The survey consists of 17 questions which cover several different aspects of care which the patient received. It is completed by the main carer 4-6 weeks after the death of the patient and upon completion, is returned to the APM for analysis. Participating services are either a hospital-based palliative care team, hospice inpatient unit or a home care team specialising in providing end of life care. Participating services receive individual feedback (including their own data) and also comparable (anonymous) data from other services.

Night, weekend and bank holiday Specialist Palliative Care Services

This guidance document produced by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the Association of Palliative Medicine (APM) recommends levels of Specialist Palliative Care (SPC) medical and nursing staffing for hospital, community and hospice settings at night, at weekends and on bank holidays. The guidance is a response to a growing understanding, within all parts of health and social care, that it is not enough to provide our services in business hours.

Click here – Specialist Palliative Care night weekend and bank holiday working

Past Surveys

Workforce Reports

Role of APM Workforce Survey

APM uses this data analysis and workforce commentaries in the submissions and presentations for the specialty:

Annual RCP Workforce annual meetings for the medical specialties
Annual APM – AGM workforce report for Palliative medicine
RCP publication of Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. Census of consultant physicians and medical registrars in the United Kingdom
RCP publication of Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. Consultant physicians working with patients (CPWWP).
Submission for the specialty to HEE workforce plans
Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, Consultant Nurse in Palliative Care Reference Group, Marie Curie Cancer Care, National Council for Palliative Care, and the Palliative Care Section of the Royal Society of Medicine.