Auditing complementary therapies in palliative care: the experience of the day-care massage service at Mount Edgcumbe Hospice.

The bulk of this paper comprises an audit of the massage service offered to day-care clients at Mount Edgcumbe Hospice. Having had no experience of audit it has been a learning process within which shortcomings of my techniques have become evident. However, during the course of the project, I became enthusiastic about the potential for change, progress and increased validation enabled by the audit process. I realised the significance and importance of audit as an evaluatory tool in relation to complementary and alternative medicine. Still in the earlier stages of acceptance by more orthodox medicine, these therapies require audit, as much as they require quality scientific research. 'Complementary and alternative medical practitioners, teachers and researchers need to understand the advantages of more systematic audit and rigorous research' (Foundation for Integrated Medicine) The objectives of this audit are: To review the performance of the massage in day-care after 2 years of activity. To obtain first hand feedback from clients, staff and carers with a view to introducing improvements. To devise a system of measuring the performance of the day-care service both for comparison internally and with other external hospices. To benefit from the discipline which the audit process itself engenders in complementary medical practice. To lend credibility to the massage service and other complementary therapies in the context of more orthodox palliative care. To arrive at a method of measuring massage as a complementary therapy. To improve communication between the different areas of the hospice. I would encourage other complementary therapists to follow suit and start auditing to help validate the importance of these therapies in today's more holistic approach to health.