Above: President of Palliative Care Australia, Dr Scott Blackwell

By Yasmin Noone

Advance care planning legislation, which currently varies state-to-state, must be nationalised in order to provide seamless end-of-life care for all Australians, Palliative Care Australia (PCA) has said.

The call for legislative action has been sounded as part of PCA’s new consensus statement, released today, which details a list of eight key priorities identified as requiring urgent action.

President of PCA, Dr Scott Blackwell, said the variation between state advance care planning laws is historic and troublesome.

“At the moment, you may do an advance care directive in WA and you end up sick while travelling in Sydney so your advance care directive will get ignored,”Dr Blackwell said.

“So we have to get over these issues.

“It is a very difficult thing to do bring seven or eight different legislative frameworks to be unified.

“…We have to do the best we can to get around [the difficulty], as it’s not going to change overnight.”

The organisation has also emphasised the need for health professionals to receive appropriate education in quality end-of-life matters, as standard across the board. That means greater palliative care education at an undergraduate level and more palliative training for aged and community care staff of all levels.  

"The general public need education but clinicians need it as well so they can consider the best end-of-life options for the patient.

“We need to address the fact that sometimes, particularly with the elderly, the best option isn’t always the best option for lengthening life but instead, to provide quality of life.

"As clinicians, [our] job has been to investigate, diagnose and treat disease in the best way we can using an evidence-based approach. So what are saying is that  we still want you to do that but we want you to also interpret the end-of-life process in terms of the person’s needs, their mental state, their emotional state and circumstances….."

PCA's consensus statement will be used to influence PCA national health reform submissions and to develop the organisation’s policy stance on upcoming issues.

It also highlights that Australians need better access to quality palliative care services;  palliative care services be better integrated within the health system; the Standards for Providing Quality Palliative Care for all Australians (the Standards) be embedded in all appropriate care settings (including residential aged care; research in palliative care must be appropriately funded and targeted; and appropriate funding must be made available by all levels of government to palliative care services on an equitable population needs basis.

“We are happy that palliative care has been improving in many sectors and in the health care system in general. But although things are moving in a good direction, there is a lot more that needs to be done.

“We are not saying that everything is bad and horrible but need to go a lot further and open the door on more conversation about end-of-life issues.

“There is broad agreement that we need a healthcare system that supports all of us to live well at the end of life. What we need to do now is start putting this into action.”

Dr Blackwell beleives that all of the priorities, goals and timelines identified in the statement are attainable.

“We call on governments at all levels, health care providers, policy makers and researchers to commit to delivering on these priorities and to make palliative and end of life care a core component of the health system.

“[We also call for action] to assist people to not only live well, but to die well too – free from pain, in the place of their choice, with the people they wish to be present and above all, with dignity.”

To view the consensus statement, click here.