Tips for Careworkers:
End-of-Life Care Pathways

What it is: A care pathway is a tool to plan best care for a person with a disease or condition where we know what to expect. End-of-life care pathways guide the care you will provide to the person who is dying.

Why it matters: Care pathways aim to:

• guide clinical decisions
• start care as soon as possible
• make sure everyone works to the same plan
• prevent unnecessary emergency treatments
• make care more efficient
• give you confidence that you are providing the right care.

What I need to know: A care pathway is different from a care plan. A care pathway represents the ideal way to manage most people with a specific problem or long-term condition. A care plan is made for an individual person and might not be the same as a care pathway.

The Residential Aged Care End of Life Care Pathway (RAC EoLCP) guides the provision of good quality terminal care in residential aged care.

Care pathways use documents, sometimes flowcharts, to outline the steps of care to be followed by members of multidisciplinary teams.

Name two aims of care pathways?

What changes in a person should I report to nursing staff?