#60 Advance Care Planning in a relational context with Dr Julian Abel

In this episode it is my absolute pleasure to talk with Dr Julian Abel who became a consultant in palliative care 2001, working initially at a district general hospital and a hospice. For more than a decade he has become increasingly involved in finding ways of building compassionate communities around people at end of life. He has run projects at local, regional and national levels. He was Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International. He is an international keynote speaker and has published regularly on models of public health palliative care. He is the editor, along with Professor Allan Kellehear, of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care.

We explore Advance Care Planning from a relational context, I learn the origins of the What Matters Most work and have an opportunity to share how much this has influenced my practice.

Key messages from guest

• We live in the context or relationships with people and place, recognition of this interdependence sees how important relationships are - an individualised approach has the potential to lose sight of this concept. 

• Making sense of the relational context of Advance Care Planning recognises the things that make life good and recognises what living well means for a person.

• If we think about relationships as being the most important thing to people we risk ignoring 

• We need to sit back, act with humility to  understand the beauty and strength of the person and the  community in which they live before we do anything else.

• Public Health Palliative Care: Death, dying loss and caregiving is everyone's responsibility

• Data from Frome demonstrated emergency admissions went down by 15% following development of a Compassionate Community.

• Too often Advance Care Planning is a medically driven conversation. 

• A What Matters Most approach to conversations transforms Advance Care Planning.

• Let’s all start having What Matters Most around our dinner tables.

  
  

Resource

• Find out more about Compassionate Communities UK

• Access Specialist Registrar Training in Public Health Palliative Care from Compassionate Communities

• Find out about Education & Events delivered by from Compassionate Communities

• To become a member of Compassionate Communities see membership for details 

• Access the Survival of the Kindest  podcast 

• Read about via the Frome model on the following links: The Frome Model and  Case study: Frome Model of Enhanced Primary Care 

• Access: What is public health palliative care? Dr Julian Abel  Director, Compassionate Communities UK 

• Access the  What Matters Most Conversations  resource and the  WHAT MATTERS MOST CHARTER

• Read Advance care planning re-imagined 

• I am because we are: Ubuntu

• See how What Matters Most fits into Advance Care Planning  in my blog  Advance Care Planning: Getting Your House in Order  

Bio

Dr Julian Abel became a consultant in palliative care 2001, working initially at a district general hospital and a hospice. For more than a decade he has become increasingly involved in finding ways of building compassionate communities around people at end of life. He has run projects at local, regional and national levels. He was Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International. He is an international keynote speaker and has published regularly on models of public health palliative care. Abel and Professor Allan Kellehear are the editors of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care. Since 2016 he has worked with Frome Medical Practice in Somerset in developing a new model of primary care combined with compassionate communities. The health outcomes of this model have been dramatic, with this being the first

intervention that has been effective in reducing whole population emergency admissions. Compassionate communities is one of the most effective therapeutic tools we have in improving

length of life and well being. Along with Professor Kellehear, he has formed Compassionate Communities UK, which he is Director. The charity has been formed to develop the broader roll out compassionate communities in primary care and public health palliative and end of life care.

Projects are underway in multiple areas in the UK and internationally.

Dr Julian Abel is joint author of The Compassion Project, along with the prize winning novelist Lindsay Clarke. The book describes the background to the Frome Project, its implementation and the wider implications of the application of compassion both in medicine and in society at large. He runs a podcast, Survival of the Kindest about compassion, its presence, its absence and the consequences of both.