PallConsult
A blog post written by Professor Elizabeth Reymond
Queensland Health (QH) is committed to improving health services for Queenslanders in areas of need including community-based end-of-life and palliative care, especially in rural and remote parts of the State. QH has funded PallConsult to help meet this need statewide.
Provision of specialist palliative care services across Queensland is, unfortunately, not equitable. In 2019, seven rural and remote Hospital and Health Services (HHSs) had poor access to community specialist palliative care services. Consequently, for many living in rural and remote areas, the reality of end-of-life may mean going ‘to town’ for palliative care and not returning home.
PallConsult, delivered by Brisbane South Palliative Care Collaborative, supports local healthcare teams to deliver patient-centred palliative care, especially in rural and remote parts of the state. The goal is to enhance patient and family end-of-life experience and to decrease unwanted hospital admissions. It does not provide direct patient care.
“Often what the rural and regional GPs will need is actually someone to ring up when they get stuck because there are no palliative care physicians in those areas…..it is about having someone to consult with…..Often GPs have a simple, single problem and often the patients do not need to see one of our specialist colleagues.” A GP PallConsult survey response.
Patients and families from rural and remote HHSs benefit from PallConsult as they can receive augmented patient-centred care in their setting of choice, avoiding unwanted hospitalisations to regional or urban hospitals hundreds of kilometres from their communities.
PallConsult has three integrated service arms:
- Two 24/7 on-call telephone advice hotlines that have received over 1,500 calls in 20 months:
- 1300 PALLDR for Doctors, Nurse Practitioners, paramedics and pharmacists and
- 1300 PALLCR for Nurses and Allied Health.
- Provision of best-practice, end-of-life care clinical resources suitable for community settings:
- Including the NIKI T34TM syringe pump learning package, which has been viewed over 18,700 times.
- Vocational education and upskilling:
- Over 725 education sessions have been conducted (5,500 clinicians attended face-to-face and 2,100 virtually).
“This Service is amazing – made me feel so much more confident and therefore the patient had a better outcome.” A GP PallConsult survey response.
Calls to PallConsult are increasing and fulfilling a previously unmet clinical need:
- Over 50% of calls have been received from HHSs that do not have a specialist palliative care service and more than 70% have been received from local GPs and nurses.
- The hotlines are increasing communication between GPs and specialists – 43% of GPs who have used the hotline have re-used it for other patients
- In seven months since Queensland Ambulance Service embedded the hotline into their protocols, 81 calls have been received from paramedics
- Over one third of calls are received after-hours and on weekends.
“Very helpful to the patient and made me feel like I could manage out here in the bush.” A GP PallConsult survey response.
Such outcomes suggest PallConsult is being effective in increasing the capacity of the generalist community healthcare workforce to deliver quality end-of-life and palliative care.
More information: https://metrosouth.health.qld.gov.au/pallconsult
Professor Elizabeth Reymond
MBBS (Hons), PhD, FRACGP, FAChPM.
Director, Brisbane South Palliative Care Collaborative, Queensland Health.