Abstract
The literature contains limited information on the problems faced by dying patients with COVID-19 and the effectiveness of interventions to manage these.
The aim of this audit was to assess the utility of our end-of-life care plan, and specifically the effectiveness of our standardised end-of-life care treatment algorithms, in dying patients with COVID-19.
The audit primarily involved data extraction from the end-of-life care plan, which includes four hourly nursing (ward nurses) assessments of specific problems: patients with problems were managed according to standardised treatment algorithms, and the intervention was deemed to be effective if the problem was not present at subsequent assessments.
This audit was undertaken at a general hospital in England, covered the 8 weeks from 16 March to 11 May 2020 and included all inpatients with COVID-19 who had an end-of-life care plan (and died).
Sixty-one patients met the audit criteria: the commonest problem was shortness of breath (57.5%), which was generally controlled with conservative doses of morphine (10-20 mg/24 h via a syringe pump). Cough and audible respiratory secretions were relatively uncommon. The second most common problem was agitation/delirium (55.5%), which was generally controlled with standard pharmacological interventions. The cumulative number of patients with shortness of breath, agitation and audible respiratory secretions increased over the last 72 h of life, but most patients were symptom controlled at the point of death.
Patients dying of COVID-19 experience similar end-of-life problems to other groups of patients. Moreover, they generally respond to standard interventions for these end-of-life problems.