By Natasha Egan
A set of online resources to help palliative care specialists and residential aged care staff better care for people with dementia and to provide the latest evidence-based information to residents and their families has been launched this week to coincide with National Palliative Care Week.
The free resources, which have been developed by CareSearch palliative care knowledge network, add to the wealth of end-of-life resources designed to help anyone needing current palliative care information and resources on CareSearch’s website.
Director of the CareSearch Knowledge Network Project and website, Dr Jennifer Tieman, said the resources bring together the knowledge base around palliative care and dementia and will enable people to keep up to date with emerging evidence.
“It’s a really important initiative to help people get the best care possible,” Dr Tieman said.
“It is a place where residential aged care staff can send residents and families to understand the latest information as it comes through.”
The new tools include the Dementia Filter, which is a one-touch search designed to improve clinician efficiency. The filter offers shortcuts to a range of broad and narrow categories on the topics with an option to show all literature or just those with the full-text available for free.
There’s also a group of pages summarising the state of Clinical Evidence in Dementia. The pages advise key issues, limitations and contexts for practice as well as links to sources of clinical guidance and further information.
The third new element is a Residential Aged Care Hub providing clear, easy-to-understand information for residents and families and people working in aged care.
While the search filters use the PubMed database, which is intended for those practising in health and professional care, Dr Tieman said CareSearch hasn’t made that distinction because it realises there are family members out there who would benefit from being able to access the literature.
Key features for residential aged care providers include information in the residetnial aged care context which really targets the knowledge area, and the open access, she said.
“It stops people having to have the skill to find the material and have the access to get it.”
The Dementia Filter was developed as part of the Integrated Care Framework for Advanced Dementia (ICF-D) project, which is a joint HammondCare and Alzheimer’s Australia initiative.
Alzheimer’s Australia National Research Manager Dr Chris Hatherly said the new resource would help people working at the palliative care coalface to access important clinical evidence.
“We know that people with dementia often miss out on palliative care services and end up dying in hospital, away from friends and family and often with untreated pain,” Dr Hatherly said.
“This resource will help to distil the mountain of clinical evidence and assist palliative care clinicians and care workers to access best-practice information to provide high quality end-of-life dementia care.”
CareSearch, which is funded by the Department of Health and Ageing, is managed by Palliative and Supportive Services at Flinders University.
National Palliative Care Week runs until Saturday May 25, see Palliative Care Australia’s website for more information including event listings.
Click the following to access the free online resources:
– Clinical Evidence pages on dementia