Senior nurses have warned that nurses must change their approach to end of life care for chronic disease after a recent report revealed only 13% of people who died from respiratory or cardiovascular causes died in their own home.

As reported by Nursing Times, the report found that patients who were suffering with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases are significantly more likely to die in hospital than at home when compared with cancer patients.

The report from the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network will interest those in domiciliary care jobs. It shows that between 2005 and 2007, over two-thirds of patients who died from respiratory causes were in hospital. Only 13% died at home, with all others dying in hospices.

For the first time the report links national data on where people die, at what age and from what cause. It found that with regards to patients who died of cancer, a quarter died at home and almost half died in hospital.

Jane Scullion, a respiratory nurse consultant at the University Hospitals of Leicester Trust, said that nurses should be asking chronic disease patients about where they wanted to die. She said there's "nothing worse than dying alone, breathless on a hospital trolley.''

Shai Davies, the head of nursing services at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Unless we take a coordinated approach, we're not going to make it happen. It's about educating each other at ground level".

Last week, South Tees Hospitals Foundation Trust launched a two year pilot of a nurse-led end of life discharge service, which offers cancer and non-cancer patients the chance to leave hospital and spend their last days at home or in a hospice.