FAMCARE Service Evaluation

Duration of service evaluation
1 August to 30 September (covers deaths during the period 1 June to 30 August)

Subjects
Consecutive bereaved “main” carers of patients referred to the service for end-of-life care.

Services
a) Hospital (hospital support teams) – HS
b) Specialist Palliative Care Inpatient Unit – IU
c) Community (home care teams) – HC

Method
The FAMCARE 2 tool will be completed on a single occasion by the main carer 4-8 weeks after the patient’s death. The FAMCARE 2 tool will be sent with a generic covering letter and a return/Freepost envelope addressed to the APM. The FAMCARE 2 tool/generic covering letter should be sent independent of other correspondence from the service (eg routine bereavement correspondence). [Professor Aoun has given permission for us to use the FAMCARE 2 tool for the purposes of the survey; he has also confirmed that the tool can be used in bereaved relatives (although the working has been amended from present tense to past tense).]

Data analysis
The data will be analysed by the APM Secretariat, and feedback given to the individual services. Services will receive their own data, and also comparable (anonymous) data from other services.

Audit Cost
The Project Lead is responsible for the cost of the audit which is £100 per service per year, to be paid at registration.

Registration closed for the 2018 FAMCARE audit

The service evaluation is being overseen by the Professional Standards Committee (Chair – Dr Sarah Cox); all queries about the service evaluation should be initially directed to Compleat Secretariat

FAMCARE and GDPR

The EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) came into force on 25 May 2018 and will be directly applicable as law in the UK. It will replace the Directive that is the basis for the UK Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998. The basic premise of the DPA will remain; the GDPR will be an enhancement of the DPA.

The APM processes a lot of sensitive information about both patients and staff. We have a responsibility to ensure that this information is protected at all times and shared in an appropriate manner. This includes the processing of Data for the FAMCARE service evaluation in which organisations contact Next of Kin or Carers.

The legal basis for organisations to contact NOK/carers under GDPR is “direct care”, dealt with under: Article 6(1)(e) of GDPR; ‘…for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority..’, using the Article 9 condition for direct care or administrative purpose 9(2)(h)”…medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems…’

It would be best practice to inform NOK/carers in advance that you may contact them. The best way to do this under the new GDPR law is to display or provide “fair processing notices” that gives the opportunity to opt out if they wish. You may wish to review your organisations’ fair processing notices to ensure compliance with the new legislation for this and other national audits

FAMCARE Overview

It has come to our attention that there may be a problem with sending our communications to the APM membership via Dotmailer, i.e. e-Bulletin. We have learned over the past month that some APM members are not aware of these communications.

Having looked into the situation, it does appear that some IT Departments are blocking these emails as the email address has not been “White Listed” with them, which in turn results in the email being blocked.

Could you please ensure that you inform your IT Department to “White List” the following email address:

Association for Palliative Medicine communications@apmonline.org.uk

Click here for “How to Whitelist Emails”

Could you please also ensure that you inform the APM if your email address changes.

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