{"id":42,"date":"2023-10-02T09:31:15","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T08:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/?page_id=42"},"modified":"2025-10-27T14:09:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:09:30","slug":"projects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Projects<\/h1>\n

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Review<\/h2>\n

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It has previously been acknowledged that, compared with other single organ conditions or cancer, it is challenging to recognise when someone with multiple long-term health conditions may be approaching the end of their life. Understanding this more would allow us to implement timely care and have discussions with people about what their priorities were at the end of their life.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the first part of our project is to understand how we are currently identifying people with multiple long-term health conditions who may be approaching the end of life. This involves a literature search of research, policy and guidelines to find how people across the world are defining the end-of-life period in multimorbidity. We are grateful to Dr Polly Black, Dr Lewis McCheyne and Dr Darcy Wilson for their support with this work.<\/p>\n

This review is now published and available here:<\/p>\n

Descriptions of advanced multimorbidity: A scoping review with content analysis – Sarah P Bowers, Polly Black, Lewis McCheyne, Darcy Wilson, Rose S Penfold, Liam Stapleton, Pam Channer, Sarah E E Mills, Linda Williams, Frances Quirk, Jo Bowden, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

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Data Linkage<\/h2>\n

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Working closely with data providers in Scotland \u2013 the electronic Data Research and Innovation Service (eDRIS) and the Scottish Longitudinal Study \u2013 we are developing large datasets that can be used to help us understand how people with multiple long-term health conditions are using health services in Scotland in their last year of life.<\/p>\n

This involves data providers linking information from lots of different sources for people who died between 2016 and 2021. We will be able to look at hospital appointments attended, use of unscheduled care services (Accident & Emergency, GP Out of Hours, Ambulance Services, NHS24), medications prescribed and death certificate data for this group of people. The data will all be anonymised and be approved for use by the Public Benefits & Privacy Panel in Scotland.<\/p>\n

The first of these papers on how people use unscheduled care in the last year of life is now published and available here:<\/p>\n

Use of unscheduled care in the last year of life for people with multiple long-term health conditions: a retrospective cohort study of 299,361 decedents | BJGP Open<\/a><\/p>\n

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Lived Experience<\/h2>\n

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It is really important that we hear from people with first-hand experience of looking after someone with multiple long-term health conditions in their last year of life. This is why a key component to our work is interviews with bereaved caregivers in the Fife area. This will allow us to understand what happened in the last year of life, why people chose to use different healthcare services and what went well and what could be improved upon.<\/p>\n

We will be recruiting people to participate in our research using a variety of Social Media platforms and recruitment via healthcare professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Total Silence<\/h2>\n

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We also worked with a composer from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Rachel Sullivan, who created a musical composition called “Total Silence” based on this research. It highlights what is like to be living with, or caring for someone, with multiple long-term conditions in the last year of life. This can be viewed via this YouTube video:<\/p>\n

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Projects ReviewIt has previously been acknowledged that, compared with other single organ conditions or cancer, it is challenging to recognise when someone with multiple long-term health conditions may be approaching the end of their life. Understanding this more would allow us to implement timely care and have discussions with people about what their priorities were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-42","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/embedsta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}