Kate Swetenham, Director of Nursing, End of Life Care, Department for Health and Wellbeing (South Australia):
The Comprehensive Palliative Care in Aged Care Program, it’s a five-year program jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the state.
It is to empower aged care providers in the delivery of specialist palliative care, and certainly was very timely with the outcomes from the Royal Commission into Safety and Quality in Residential Aged Care.
Paul Tait, Palliative Care Pharmacist, Rural Support Service:
Our project had two main focuses. Part of it was doing a medical-led needs round and the other part was providing nurse education for the nurses in the facility.
Dr Sue Haynes, Palliative Medicine Specialist:
What we did was actually develop a model where the needs round was medically led by a palliative medicine specialist, myself, with support form palliative specialists, nurse practitioners and nurse educators.
Jane Pickering, Chief Executive Officer, Eldercare:
What it did was really increase the confidence of our staff to be able to manage the whole end-of-life journey for the residents and their families.
We had over 450 needs rounds, which meant that our residents had a very planned end-of-life program.
Palliative care needs rounds led either by a medical or nurse practitioner and staff education increased the confidence of staff to manage the whole end-of-life journey for aged care residents and their families.