Hospice at home 1: the development of a crisis intervention service

This article is the first in a series of two which report on the development and evaluation of a rapid response crisis intervention service for patients in the advanced stages of cancer. A number of recent studies have identified the need for rapid response teams who are able to provide palliative and specialist palliative care in the home setting (King et al, 2000; Mantz, 2000; Thomas, 2001). By providing an overview of the relevant literature and describing the experience of developing this scheme the authors' aim is to share good practice with interested professionals who may be contemplating setting up similar schemes. This article outlines the development of a 'hospice at home' scheme until its launch and identifies the strategies used to ensure the early success of the project.