Environments for care at the end of life

There is growing awareness of the importance of the environment within health care. The King's Fund's Enhancing the Healing Environment (EHE) programme encourages and enables nurse-led teams to work in partnership with patients to improve the environment in which to deliver care.

This publication describes projects in 19 NHS trusts and one HM prison that took part in schemes to improve the environment of care at the end of life. Environments for care at the end of life describes the broader EHE programme, which has been supported by the Department of Health in a series of publications entitled 'Improving the patient experience'  and goes on to present case studies of the sites that took part in the programme.

Each of the case studies includes photographs of the original space that was chosen for improvement and of the finished project. There are also comments from staff and from users highlighting the importance of the changes to the environment for both the cared for and the carer.

The projects featured in Environments for care at the end of life show that, even in the most uninspiring environment, it is possible to create welcoming and comfortable spaces that are fit for purpose, good value for money and can improve the quality of care and the patient experience.

The text includes a summary of the independent evaluation of the programme by the University of Nottingham and also a comprehensive project directory, offering details of the individual work carried out in each project, names of artists and others from whom work was commissioned and also project costings.

See more of our work on Enhancing the Healing Environment project