Supporting specialist palliative care services 

There are many different resources that can support palliative care specialist and specialist palliative care services. The Palliative Care Australia (PCA) Service Development Guidelines and Standards speak to the importance of recognising the diversity of the population, expertise with respect to symptom management, support for families and carers, education and training of the workforce, settings of care and contributing to research and benchmarking. CareSearch resources relevant to each of these service responsibilities are detailed below.

Population health

The Diversity section recognises that people from diverse backgrounds can find the health system difficult to navigate or the right support hard to find. These pages include:

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Hub provides information on culturally appropriate care.

The Primary Health Care section explores pathways and frameworks in primary health care with respect to palliative care provision.


Symptom management

Clinical Evidence pages provide summaries of systematic review level evidence for common symptoms seen in caring for palliative care patients:

Each symptom contains hyperlinked searches to the latest evidence and links to relevant systematic reviews.

COVID-19 resources for specialist palliative care are available. They cover:

  • Care of the dying and seriously ill
  • Medicines management - Australian resources
  • Decision-making
  • Ethical issues and resource allocation
  • Communication
  • Self-care
  • Infection control
  • Grief and bereavement
  • Vaccination

Families and carers

The Patients and Carers section contains evidenced based resources and materials suitable for the Australian families. Services can also order copies of the Patients and Carers booklet for patients, carers or family members.

CarerHelp is a partner project and has a wide range information and resources that can be recommended or provided to family carers.

Visit the CarerHelp website

CarerHelp

Education and training 

To meet the needs of an expanding workforce, training and education is critical. The Health Professional Education section provides educational and continuing professional development options for the whole palliative care team.

There is also information on upcoming conferences and short courses and workshops.

Visit the CareSearch Health Practitioner Education pages

Health Practitioner Education

Settings of care

Specialist palliative care interacts with and provides support and leadership for care being provided in many different settings. Team members can find information on Primary Health Care, Aged Care, Acute Care, Paediatrics, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Care.

Research, data and evidence

The Evidence Centre is introducing new resources to support access to and translation of evidence. Important resources for specialist palliative care services and teams include:

Health professionals looking for research support should visit RePaDD, a CareSearch project partner. This provides a Getting Started in Research resource and ReSearch, A resource for finding PubMed articles on the conduct of research.

Visit the RePaDD website

RePaDD

Specialist palliative care resources

PCA Service Development Guide

PCA Standards

National Palliative Care Program

Last updated 24 August 2021

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