ReSPECT stands for Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment. The ReSPECT process creates a personalised recommendation for your clinical care in emergency situations where you are not able to make decisions or express your wishes. ReSPECT forms have now been introduced in York and will be replacing DNACPR forms over the next few months. A paper copy with stay with a patient at their address and an electronic version will be added to the patient records.
Information from the Resus Council’s website
This plan can be for anyone, but will have increasing relevance for people who have complex health needs, people who are likely to be nearing the end of their lives, and people who are at risk of sudden deterioration or cardiac arrest. Some people will want to record their care and treatment preferences for other reasons.
The plan is created through conversations between you and your health professionals. The plan stays with you and should be available immediately to health professionals called to help you in an emergency, whether you are at home or being cared for elsewhere. Professionals such as ambulance crews, out-of-hours doctors, care home staff and hospital staff will be better able to make quick decisions about how best to help you if they can see your ReSPECT plan in an emergency.
The ReSPECT process is designed to support conversations between you and your health professionals (and other people important to you) in order to understand your priorities of care and use those to develop an agreed plan that records what types of care or treatment.
It is important to understand that the ReSPECT plan cannot be used to demand treatments that are not likely to benefit you and would not be offered.
In an emergency where you are not able to say what is important to you, clinical decisions will be made by health professionals trying to act in your best interests and for your benefit.
In an emergency, health or care professionals may have to make rapid decisions about your treatment, and you may not be well enough to discuss what is important to you. This plan empowers you to guide them on what treatments you would or would not want to be considered for, and to have recorded those treatments that could be important or those that would not work for you. Many treatments that can be life-sustaining for some people carry a risk of causing harm, discomfort or loss of dignity. Many people choose not to accept that risk if the likelihood of benefit from treatment is small. This plan is to record your preferences and agreed realistic recommendations for emergency situations, whatever stage of life you are at.
The views of patients and carers are very important to this work. We would therefore be grateful if you would take a few minutes to complete this ICB survey. Please do not put your name on this form. It will be used anonymously to help us evaluate the work the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership are doing.
Yesterday was potentially one of the busiest days we have ever experienced. We had unprecedented numbers of requests for urgent/same day appointments. We prepared for the Tuesday post-bank holiday by allocating nearly all clinics as urgent/on the day. We assessed and saw as many patients as we safely could across the day. We are experiencing very similar today - we opened the phone lines and online form at 8am as usual and have already reached capacity for the day at 8:15am. If your clinical query isn’t urgent, please consider contacting us later this week. If appropriate, please use the NHS website, local pharmacy or NHS111 for advice. Thank you for your patience.
Many people are starting to think about their summer holidays in the coming months. Please do think ahead and have everything prepared before you travel. See the recent news post on our website for more advice and tips: ✈️ https://www.priorymedical.net/news/be-travel-ready/
