Human rights in end-of-life-care: Implementation and early evaluation of a Sue Ryder training programme

Abstract

A human rights approach to end-of-life care supports health and social care practitioners in making balanced, and often difficult, decisions with people at the end of life, in order to make personalised care a reality. The approach is based on the UK Human Rights Act, 1998, which outlines the legal duty of all practitioners to respect and protect the human rights of those in their care. Many practitioners are unaware of their legal duty under the UK Human Rights Act, and so, in collaboration with the British Institute of Human Rights, Sue Ryder developed a three-year training programme to educate and empower the end-of-life care workforce in the UK, to enable them to better understand their legal duty and to feel confident in embracing human rights as an integral component of end-of-life care. This paper presents the results from the first six months of implementation of the Sue Ryder training programme.