Push to embed specialist palliative care in aged care

All residential aged care facilities should have access to dedicated palliative care services, a forum hosted by Palliative Care NSW and attended by health professionals, carers and policymakers has heard.

Attendees pack the Palliative Care NSW forum held at Parliament House
Attendees pack the Palliative Care NSW forum held at Parliament House

All residential aged care facilities should have access to specialist palliative care services, Palliative Care NSW is recommending following a forum it hosted at Sydney’s Parliament House this week.

Wednesday’s full-house event drew 160 health professionals, carers, volunteers, community members, politicians, and others involved in policy development to discuss further improving palliative care services in the state.

The forum included over 10 presentations from experts and an interactive panel discussion.

Palliative Care NSW executive officer Linda Hansen said the idea for dedicated palliative care services came from clinical nurse consultant Jane Mahony, who works in aged care in the Bowral region

“Her idea is that we should embed specialist palliative care services within residential aged care facilities and we will incorporate this in our new list of recommendations,” Ms Hansen said.

Rather than a specialist clinical nurse consultant (CNC) per facility, the idea is to have one CNC available to a number of facilities within a region, she said.

“There is not always a need for a CNC to be there but if you know you can get one there that afternoon or the next day, that is quite an improvement.”

Elsewhere during the day’s discussions, consumer advocates called for a greater emphasis to be placed on translated material to ensure the availability of more information in languages other than English, Ms Hansen said.

“[Translated materials] are available but they are clearly not being promoted as being available. That’s something we need to overcome.”

Overall the forum aimed to discuss how to further improve palliative care services in NSW following the state government’s announcement in September for $35 million in funding for community-based palliative care to close some current gaps.

Overall Ms Hansen said people were very supportive of the package. And in a challenging financial environment it was “pretty impressive” that the NSW Minister for Health, Jillian Skinner, had managed to get money for palliative care, she said.

“Palliative Care NSW is very appreciative of the new packages and we think it is a great start. Yesterday was about looking at what else can we do.”

Part of the community package is funding for an after-hours support line, which is particularly targeted at meeting the needs of people dying in rural and remote areas.

Ms Hansen said after-hours care was an issue many people touched on at the forum.

“The challenge with the telephone support is how you help somebody you don’t know,” she said.

A well-received suggestion for the ministry was for people receiving palliative care services to register as a palliative care patient, Ms Hansen said.

Registered patients would then have an electronic record, which is accessed from an iPad in their home, updated when a nurse comes to visit or something happens, and uploaded to be available to the central phone support service, she said.

“Then there is at least some knowledge of the clinical background of that person and their family,” she said.

While the new packages were originally on the discussion agenda, attendees realised it was too early in the rollout to assess the new packages but stakeholders will follow up in six months’ time at a similar meeting, Ms Hansen said.

Speakers at the event included Palliative Care NSW president Carolyn Walsh, vice-president Peter Cleasby, palliative care specialist at St George Hospital Dr Frank Brennan, and carer Jenny Gannon who spoke about after-hours support.

Tags: palliative care, Palliative-Care-NSW, residential-aged-care,

1 thought on “Push to embed specialist palliative care in aged care

  1. I applaud Linda Hansen’s call for increased palliative care input in residential aged care. Interestingly, the concept of embedding palliative care specialists in aged care facilities is already happening.
    I am a palliative care nurse practitioner employed by Resthaven Inc., a large not for profit aged care provider in South Australia. I provide specialist consultancy services to residents/clients across five residential facilities and two community services. My role also allows me as an ‘insider’ to provide targeted education to all levels of staff as well as contributing to clinical policy development and review.

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