May 2021 enews

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This month:

New page on Royal Commission's final report
Interactive SPICT forms released
Careworker tips to manage grief
Environmental modifications

palliAGED Updates

Aged care staff assisting an older person to walk

New palliAGED page: Royal Commission final report

Our new page outlines the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, including how these relate to addressing the end-of-life care needs of older Australians.

Interactive SPICT forms

We are proud to announce that CareSearch/palliAGED is now a platinum partner of the International SPICT Programme. To help you put evidence into practice we have developed interactive and printable versions of the internationally-validated Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT). Now available on our website, the forms will help aged care staff with early identification of older people with deteriorating health due to advanced conditions or a serious illness.

Download forms

Coming soon: palliAGED modules for aged care

Providing palliative care is an essential part of quality aged care. To support aged care nurses with the basics of palliative care, we will soon release a series of online introductory modules to complement the highly successful evidence-based palliAGED Practice Tip Sheet resources.

Release of the modules is planned to coincide with this year's National Palliative Care Week. They will be freely available from the website along with all of the palliAGED resources including our range of forms for aged care.

Everyone has a role in palliative care

Health professionals, aged care staff, family carers, and others in our community all have a role to play in providing palliative care and support. CareSearch's Part of Life campaign has resources that can help, including videos and a factsheet on what is palliative care?

Latest Evidence

Featherstone I et al. The experience of delirium in palliative care settings for patients, family, clinicians and volunteers: A qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis. Palliat Med. 2021:2692163211006313.

McAnee G et al. Assessment of pain in people living with dementia at the end of life: a systematic review. Int J Palliat Nurs. 2021;27(2):72-85.

Lormans T et al. Toward a socio-spiritual approach? A mixed-methods systematic review on the social and spiritual needs of patients in the palliative phase of their illness. Palliat Med. 2021:2692163211010384.

Palliative Perspectives Blogs for Aged Care

Meeting the grief, loss, and
bereavement needs of family caregivers

Dr Priyanka Vandersman from RePaDD at Flinders University shares how evidence, research, and inputs from family caregivers and aged care staff formed the foundation of a practical booklet aimed at supporting bereavement, grief, and loss. The booklet will also be made available via the CareSearch and palliAGED websites soon.

Acknowledge your grief and recognise that it is a normal reaction to loss; Talk to your supervisor and colleagues about what you are experiencing; Contact bereavement counsellors/services to help you deal with grief and loss.

Managing your own grief

Caring for others can be rewarding. But as part of the aged care team looking after many people who die, you may experience repeated grief. Our palliAGED Practice Tip Sheet provides some pointers.

Download now (428kb pdf)

Practical Points for Nurses

Environmental modification

An older person’s physical environment contributes to their quality of life. The space in which the person lives may need to be modified to provide needed equipment or to enable aspects of care to be provided. palliAGED has practical guidance on what you and your organisation can do.

Supporting bereavement

As an illness progresses, a person, their family, carers and friends may experience intense feelings of grief associated with losses and the relationship changes that unfold. General practitioners can help by acknowledging the experience of grief or bereavement and providing support.

ABS releases pilot study results for place of death

In response to the Productivity Commission report of 2017 highlighting the value of place of death data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) commenced a pilot project to examine ways of obtaining and reporting this data in a meaningful format. In April 2021 results of the pilot study covering data for 2019 were released. This showed that half of all deaths in Australia occurred in a hospital/medical service area and almost 30% in residential aged care facilities. Visit the ABS website to read the full report, including a special case study report on place of death for deaths due to COVID-19 in 2020.

Palliative Care Australia releases new report

Palliative Care Australia (PCA) has released a new report, Palliative care is core business for aged care, which summarises the Royal Commission’s recommendations against Palli8, PCA’s eight-point plan for palliative care. PCA also notes in their media release that ‘The Final report also acknowledges that evidence heard during the life of the Royal Commission shows that too few people receive evidence-based end-of-life and palliative care, and instead experience unnecessary pain or indignity in their final days, weeks and months.’

This month:

palliAGED Updates