I have been looking at a guide for housing staff on end-of-life care, and I'm struck by the numbers of specialised nurses that they have to work with: here's the listing in the guide: the district nurse, the Macmillan nurse, Marie Curie nursing service, community matrons, nurses in discharge planning teams.



Not mentioned, there are nurses in hospices (home care nurses and nursing at home services that some hospices run) nuses in the charitable chains of hospices (Sue Ryder homes and the Marie Curie hospices) (separately managed from their nursing service - why?) hospitals and care homes.



Is there scope for merging some of these functions, services and charities. Granted they would probably all say they have different objectives, values etc etc. But really how different is it all? And, in these hard times, would it not save a lot of money and improve efficiency to merge some of these specialist services or plan them differently? http://amplify.com/u/bwf92