Bridging the Care Gap: An evaluation of palliative day-care services

Palliative day care services provide individual, patient centred and holistic care acting on domains including but not restricted to medical models of care. Daycare is traditionally an under researched area; it can also be difficult to evaluate from the patient perspective. This study adopted a mixed methods approach that used patients and staff input to design and deliver a study that evaluated day care services. Researchers found that Daycare was of great importance to the patients and their families, particular aspects of the service that were seen to be crucial were the socio-medical model, the wide variety of therapeutic services, provision of transport and the social supportive environment.
Principal Investigators: Dr Catherine Anne Field and Dr Geraldine Mc Darby
Collaborators: Galway Hospice, Sora Abdul Fatta (NUIG Student Researcher)

Dr Catherine Anne Field, (BSocSc, MSc, PhD) is lecturer in health promotion in the School of Health Science at the National University of Ireland Galway since 2013. Catherine Anne completed her undergraduate degree in Social Science at University College Dublin (UCD) and a Masters in Health Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE). She initially worked for six years in the area of community based addiction care and mental health in Ireland and the United Kingdom in a clinical and research remit. After which she joined the School of Applied Social Science at UCD where she worked as a Research Assistant and University Teacher. She was awarded her PhD from UCD in 2013 for her study ‘ The management of problem alcohol use among patients attending primary care for opiate substitution treatment’. The PhD was part of a Health Research Board funded project, and the findings were used to develop clinical guidelines for the management of problem alcohol use among drug users in in primary care. She was also a co-reviewer and co-author on a Cochrane Systematic Review – “Psychosocial interventions for problem alcohol use among drug users”. Catherine Anne is actively involved in the promotion of compassion, empathy and resilience in healthcare professionals and is a facilitator for the Schwartz Rounds at Galway University Hospital.