Mrs Jane Stephens1, Dr Karen Cooper1, Prof Liz Reymond1
1Brisbane South Palliative Care Collaborative, Metro South Health, Brisbane, Australia
Biography:
Jane has worked in palliative care for 18 years and as a part of a specialist palliative care team for 10 years. Her major interest is ensuring that people who wish to remain at home at end of life receive quality care and that their families are well supported. Jane is excited to bring her knowledge of community palliative care to the caring@home project to support health professionals, patients and families across Australia.
Abstract:
Background: Most palliative care patients can be managed by primary health care. caring@home will expand existing scope to provide additional resources and educational opportunities for the primary health care workforce. Activities will be contextualised within an existing primary care End-of-Life Framework covering the last 12 months of life.
Aims: The aim of caring@home for 2023-2026 is to support timely, evidence-based end-of-life care for home-based palliative patients by providing nationally consistent, standardised resources and workforce capacity improvements within primary care environments.
Methods: caring@home formed a Steering Committee and convened four advisory committees with representation from key stakeholders to oversee the project including development of new resources and delivery of education for the primary care workforce.
Activities include:
Developing practical resources
Providing education for primary health professionals
Delivering a national rollout and communications activities
Undertaking evaluation
Results: The project developed resources that support:
Primary care clinicians to use a standardised proactive approach to managing end-of-life care
Revised primary care End-of-Life Care Framework
Symptom management at end of life
A National Core Community Palliative Care Medicines List
Revised palliMEDS app
Carers to be empowered to care for family members at home
Tip sheets about symptom management
Tip sheets about providing personal care
Practical and engaging versions of resources to support carers who manage subcutaneous medicines at home
Services to routinely collect accurate end-of-life audit data
An end-of-life clinical audit
Conclusions: Contextualising new caring@home education and resources within the Framework will embed them into routine primary care clinical practice. The capacity of primary care health clinicians to provide quality end-of-life care for home-based patients will be increased through new resources and education opportunities.
Funding acknowledgement: caring@home is funded by the Australian Government and led by Brisbane South Palliative Care Collaborative.