Blog

Some patients do not receive adequate pain and symptom relief at the end of life, causing distress to patients, families and healthcare professionals. It is unclear whether undertreatment of symptoms occurs, in part, because of nurses' concerns about legal and/or disciplinary repercussions if the patient dies after medication is administered. Dr Katrin Gerber, Professor Lindy Willmott, Professor Ben White, and Distinguished Professor Patsy Yates from Queensland University of Technology discuss the findings from their research and interviews with nurses from different clinical backgrounds and settings about their concerns when providing pain and symptom relief to patients near the end of life.

palliAGED provides palliative care practice and evidence guidance for our aged care workforce. Susan Gravier and Robyn Dutschke, Research Associates from CareSearch and palliAGED, discuss the importance of psychosocial care in providing quality palliative care and how the new palliAGED pages on the topic were developed.

Art therapy is used in palliative care to compliment a holistic approach to care and to augment traditional clinical and medical approaches. In this blog, Estelle Chapple, an Art Therapist for Central Adelaide Palliative Care, and Michelle Cripps, Director for Centre for Creative Health, discuss the impact of art therapy in palliative care settings.

The last five years has seen major change in aged care policy directions and regulation. In this blog, CareSearch and palliAGED Director Professor Jennifer Tieman discusses the importance of reviewing and consolidating aged care resources to ensure currency, relevance, and ease of access, and how palliAGED responds to the varied and changing contexts in which care is provided.

Discussions about CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) are difficult because they confront the person with death. However, when cardiac arrest occurs there is no time to ponder the pros and cons of CPR or to discuss this with the person’s substitute medical treatment decision-maker. Dr Barbara Hayes, Clinical Lead in Advance Care Planning and Palliative Care Consultant at Northern Health, discusses the importance of increasing awareness of CPR decision-making prior to acute illness and why discussions and decisions are a necessary part of medical treatment planning.