The aim was to investigate the interface between elderly care and emergency preparedness from the elderly care staff’s perspective.

A web-based questionnaire was sent to elderly care staff in 4 Swedish municipalities. The questions involved experiences of extraordinary events, education and exercises, and risk and vulnerability analyses, evaluations of main risks and emergency preparedness, and familiarity with preparedness plans. In total, 568 elderly care staff responded.

Between 15% and 25% of the respondents claimed experiences of extraordinary events, exercises and education, and risk and vulnerability analyses. The same number claimed familiarity with the organization’s preparedness plan, whereas ~85% answered that they need more education and exercises. Emergency preparedness was evaluated as important. The experiences and risks referred to pertained to both official categories used within emergency preparedness and issues such as work conditions, seniors’ fall accidents.

Elderly care staff, though highly motivated, do not seem to be involved in emergency preparedness and are not targeted to a large extent when education and training are organized. A development of the interface between emergency preparedness and elderly care could require a clarification of the scope and context of emergency preparedness and of differing understandings of central concepts. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:86–93)

This article examines the views and opinions of staff from a larger study exploring the palliative and end-of-life care needs of patients with progressive long-term neurological conditions (PLTNC).

Eighty staff, in a range of professions from three types of care services provided to people with PLTNC in England, took part in 14 focus groups and 3 individual interviews. Sites included six long-term residential neurological care centers, an inpatient service at an urban hospice, and a multi-disciplinary outpatient service for people with Huntington's disease.

Findings show a concordance between the views of staff from across the three types of participating services. Staff placed particular emphasis on teamwork, support from community-based resources, and developing rapport with patients in order to provide high quality palliative and end-of-life care. All staff perceived that identifying the dying phase was a particular challenge, sometimes resulting in patients being admitted to hospital at the end of life in contravention of their expressed advance wishes for place of death.

This article adds to a small body of literature that seeks staff views and opinions about the rewards and challenges of providing palliative and end-of-life care to people with complex needs arising from long-term conditions. Although this article focuses primarily on the challenges of caring for people with neurological conditions, many issues reported are of wider relevance for the delivery of palliative and end-of-life care in other conditions.