By Yasmin Noone

Australia’s palliative care movement could be in danger of drifting too far away from its grass roots if consumers, advocates, service providers and aged care workers do not redirect it back on course and contribute to the Senate inquiry into palliative care, now underway.

Executive director of Palliative Care Council, South Australia, Tracey Watters, believes that the recently announced Palliative Care in Australia Senate inquiry presents the sector with a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to tell the government all that is good, bad and ugly about the current state of palliative care services.

But, she said, if this opportunity is not seized and the government does not hear the real life stories of older people, their families and friends who have been denied access to vital, quality and timely palliative care services – and the sad tales about the consequences – then the palliative care sector will be at a loss.

“From a consumer’s point of view, there seems to be an inordinate number of barriers to accessing specialist palliative care services,” Ms Watters said.

“Dying is no longer what promotes palliative care…Palliative care is becoming acute care. People are having to get into a crisis situation to get [palliative care] services, which is really juxtaposed to what palliative care should be.

“My worry is that in the growth and development of palliative care as a specialty is almost taking it away from its grass-roots [objective], which is to care for people with a terminal illness and help them make use of their time until they die.

“Here in Adelaide, palliative care [services] are quite well served but there are still an emerging number of people almost being denied access because, again, specialist palliative care se...
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