The changing times of palliative care

It is easy to encourage more people to take up jobs in the healthcare industry, but what we really need to do is look at the changing roles within the sector, Palliative Care Australia vice president, Patsy Yates, says.

Speaking to DPS eNews yesterday (Tuesday, 6 September 2011), Ms Yates says there needs to be “new and extended” roles for nurse practitioners.

“The issue we have is that there is an ageing population and more people are dying from chronic conditions, but at the same time we have a workforce that is not necessarily keeping up with the pace,” Ms Yates says.

The aim to strengthen end-of-life care in Australia is held as a high priority, according to Ms Yates, who says “medical staff changing” is vital.

This was one of many important issues discussed at the Planning for Diversity palliative care conference in Cairns last week.

“We need to look at extending services into aged care facilities and train nurse practitioners to have the skills and abilities to use the workforce more efficiently,” she says.

Ms Yates also claims extending services of allied health professionals and allowing pharmacists to take on the roles of monitoring medications will give GPs more time to focus on ‘person-centred care’.

“Palliative care in Australia is really extending the reach to more people who need it, whereas in the past, it only was really available to patients with cancer in major treatment facilities,” she says.

“Now it has expanded and we need to see how we can meet the palliative care needs of people in aged care facilities,” Ms Yates adds.

Palliative Care Australia chief executive, Dr Yvonne Luxford, tells DPS eNews last week’s conference discussed many ground-breaking issues, including last month’s release of the Productivity Commission report into Caring for Older Australians.

“We will be engaging in advocacy around the PC report and are very keen to see government commitment to palliative and aged care in the next Budget,” Dr Luxford says.

The conference’s key speakers made mention of much debated issues such as the pay scales in aged care and the need for higher levels of training and education among aged and community care workers.

“There was really interesting and complex discussion into the workforce and generally how important it is to provide the right training to aged care workers,” Dr Luxford says.

Strong support for advanced care planning was another interesting panel discussion.

“Although advanced care plans will not prevent hospital admissions, it will make an end-of-life care plan clearer to health professionals and the family of a palliative care patient,” Dr Luxford says.

“Patient-centred care is vital in determining what is important to the patient and trying to help them achieve their own sense of dignity,” she adds.