The PALLUP Study: Improving home-based palliative care for older people
Start date
September 2019End date
September 2024Aims
This study will help home care services to meet the needs of older people living with severe frailty who are in their final years of life, and their families.
This study will improve services and outcomes by:
- Understanding the palliative care needs of older people living with severe frailty.
- Supporting families to work with palliative care services and reduce unnecessary interventions.
- Equipping community services to provide palliative care for older people living with severe frailty, to ensure a consistently high-quality service.
Research phases
- Phase 1. Defining and agreeing the core palliative care needs.
- Phase 2. Establishing current practice in extending community provision of palliative care for older people living with severe frailty
- Phase 3. Collecting both patient and family experiences and service response over a year
- Phase 4. Developing key features and resources to implement learning in practice
Study team
Professor Caroline Nicholson
Professor of Palliative Care and Ageing
Biography
Caroline is a Clinical Academic Nurse and her research forwards understanding and care for older people living with complex needs. She is particularly interested in the transitions that occurs in the last phase of life. Caroline qualified as a Registered Nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital London. She worked as a specialist Palliative Care Nurse before undertaking a combined BSc (Hons) in Community Nursing DN/HV Certs at King’s College London. She went on to an MSc in Medical Anthropology at Brunel University London before completing her PhD at City University, London in 2009. She is a FHEA from the Institute of Education and holds a diploma in psycho-dynamic approaches to old age from the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London
Caroline is a HEE/NIHR Senior Clinical Academic Lecturer, working between the School of Health Sciences at Surrey University and St Christopher’s Hospice, London. She is passionate in her belief that everyone should have access to the best care and support in the final years of their life. She has a long-held interest in the experiences and palliative care needs of older people and their families and is co-lead in End of life Care for the British Geriatrics Society.
Caroline studies the experiences and care of older people living with complex needs across care settings, to develop interventions which equally value quality of life with quantity of years in old age. She has a long-held interest in the experience of older people living with frailty, and their capabilities as well as their current and future vulnerabilities. Her work also includes the development of care services and a workforce that can recognize, facilitate and enhance the processes and outcomes of high-quality palliative and supportive care. Caroline is committed to building the next generation of clinical academics and is an NIHR Nurse Training Advocate . Research expertise includes participatory action research, narrative research, mixed method research and complex intervention development.
Dr Richard Green
Research Fellow in Palliative Care and Ageing
Biography
Richard is a Research Fellow working on The PALLUP Study - Improving home based palliative care for frail elders. He completed a BSc in Criminology and Sociology at Royal Holloway University and then an MSc in Social Research Methods at the University of Surrey before completing his PhD in Sociology in partnership with both universities on an ESRC studentship. Before joining the PALLUP study, he worked at the Office for National Statistics as a Senior Research Officer.
Richard's PhD explored men's experiences following treatment for prostate cancer in a qualitative interviewing study. His primary research interests sit within the field of the sociology of health and illness, with particular interests in themes including ageing, gender, chronic illness, and embodiment.
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