RCGP and Marie Curie recommend the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) and CSNAT Toolkit as part of their Daffodil Standards for General Practice

RCGP and Marie Curie have just launched the UK General Practice Core Standards for Advanced Serious Illness and End of Life Care. Named the Daffodil Standards, they provide a structure for general practices to proactively improve the quality of their care for those affected by advanced serious illness or end of life care. This includes specific recommendations for carers who support patients.

The Daffodil Standards recommend the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) and the online CSNAT Approach Training and Implementation Toolkit as the key resources for supporting holistic carer assessments in general practice.  Further, the standards show how The CSNAT Approach can be used, not only to help carers express what their individual support needs are but also to help them identify what supportive input would help meet their needs as part of a carer prescription.

Dr Gail Ewing from the University of Cambridge and Prof Gunn Grande from the University of Manchester who developed the CSNAT Approach comment “We are thrilled that the RCGP and Marie Curie have endorsed the CSNAT and online CSNAT Toolkit in their recommendations and recognise their relevance for general practice. The CSNAT Approach should be applicable for all carers who are supporting someone with advanced and terminal disease. Working through general practice makes it possible to reach all carers affected. Whilst only a proportion of patients receive specialist care, all patients should receive help from a general practitioner, and general practice has support for carers as part of their remit.”

Further information on the CSNAT Approach and Toolkit can be found at http://csnat.org/ and  http://csnat.org/online-training/.

Date Published: 28/02/2019