Updated palliative care framework launched

Two lots of palliative care resources, including new standards, guidelines and support materials, have been released to support aged care providers. 

Palliative Care Australia launched the 5th edition of the National Palliative Care Standards and the Palliative Care Service Development Guidelines to help guide services, health professionals on delivering high-quality palliative care.

The revised nine standards, down from 13, make it easier for health services to implement and report against the standards, said PCA chief executive Liz Callaghan.

The standards stipulate the importance of access to community and inpatient-based services for aged care residents.

The documents have been designed to complement work underway to update the National Palliative Care Strategy, which due to be released later in 2018.

The new standards are available here and the guidelines here.

PCA also called for state governments to fund two full-time palliative care consultants per 100,000 people and provide adequate training pathways for doctors to specialise in palliative care.

Resources launched

Also this week, Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) launched Making Choices for Life, a resource to help care providers and staff in adopting a person-centred palliative care approach.

The resource includes videos and fact sheets on:

• Advance care directives – supporting an individual client’s preferences for quality of life choices, applying an ethical-legal framework.
• Pain – responding to and implementing strategies to manage an individual client’s pain and promote comfort and quality of life.
• Authentic diversity – providing a supportive environment which honours the unique preferences, culture, needs and beliefs of the individual client, their families, carers and /or significant others.
• Death and loss, our emotional responses – identifying and reflecting upon our own emotional responses to death and dying, exploring access to bereavement care and support.

The training materials are freely available here.

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