The Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment (ReSPECT) process aims to help patients and doctors or nurses talk about and record advice on emergency treatments. This is important because in lots of medical emergencies a person is not able to talk about or make decisions for themselves. It is best to make plans, as far as possible, ahead of an emergency situation when the patient and their health care professionals have more time to talk about and decide what should go into the plan.

The aim of the study is to evaluate the new national ReSPECT process for adults being admitted to acute hospitals to determine how, when and why they are used and what effects they have on patient care. The study will use a mixed methods approach to evaluate the impact of ReSPECT. We will use national audit data to compare patient outcomes in hospitals that adopt ReSPECT compared with those that use other systems. We will look in more detail at how the ReSPECT process is used in routine clinical practice and it’s impacts on patient care in six acute NHS hospitals. We will also investigate it’s impact on primary care practitioners working in the areas surrounding these hospitals.

The evaluation is important in finding out how well the ReSPECT process works, whether it needs revision and to understand its impact on patient care. If you are interested in finding out more about how the ReSPECT process was developed please click here: www.respectprocess.org.uk

4 years

November 2016 - 2020