Spiritual Care Committee

Committee Report to Grampian NHS Board - Committee Meeting on 6 May 2015

Purpose of Report

This report updates the Grampian NHS Board on key issues arising from the Committee meeting on 6 May 2015which the Committee considers would be of interest to Board members.

Recommendation

The Board is asked to note the following key points:

1 Spiritual Care Delivery Plan

Sheila Mitchell, national Programme Director for Health and Social Care Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care, NHS Education for Scotland (NES), attended the Committee meeting to talk about the forthcomingSpiritual Care Delivery Plan. This will be published as a Chief Executive Letter (CEL) in the coming months.The plan will have five key outcomes:

  • To promote asset-based approaches to resilience and wellbeing in all areas of practice
  • To enable and support Health and Social Care staff to enhance spiritual wellbeing
  • To further develop evidence-based practice
  • To buildand sustain a flexible workforce
  • To develop service-wide consistency of practice and accountability

It was explained thatas a result of the Delivery Plan there will be more consistency in terms of how chaplaincy teams operateacross Scotland. Although each Board will need to report on the Delivery Plan many of the key deliverables will be areas that Boards are already addressing so it is not anticipated that this will be burdensome

2 New death certificationprocedures

The Committee received a presentation from Karan Taylor, Clinical Quality Facilitator, on the new death certificationprocedures. She explained that a national review system of medical certificates of cause of death (MCCDs) began on 13 May 2015 to provide independent checks on the quality and accuracy of completion of MCCDs. There will be two levels of review which will be carried out by the Death Certification Review Service under the auspices of Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

3 Access to information

The Committee continued the discussion about ensuring that chaplains can meet the needs of patients who have asked for support or a visit. It was noted that the chaplains would be attending the new daily hospital-wide huddles and that Mark Rodgers, Head of Spiritual Care, would be speaking at the Senior Charge Nurse Forum to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of recording the spiritual care needs of patients and ensuring these are passed to the chaplaincy team and hence to the wider faith communities, if appropriate.

Rhona Atkinson

Chair

Spiritual Care Committee

May 2015

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