From Ideas to Impact: Reflections from the 2026 PCNA Conference

By Dr Priyanka Vandersman, Senior Research Fellow, ELDAC

Pictured: Kate Swetenham, PCNA President, with Dr Priyanka Vandersman. 

The ELDAC team joined hundreds of nurses at the Palliative Care Nurses Australia (PCNA) Biennial Conference, held at the Adelaide Convention Centre on 11 and 12 June. This year’s theme, “From Ideas to Impact: Innovating Together for Equity and Access,” set the tone perfectly for two days of inspiring learning and warm connection.

The conference atmosphere held the kind of energy that comes from a workforce who care deeply and think creatively about this work, and we came away with full hearts and a long list of new ideas.

ELDAC was fortunate to have a table at the conference, and we were quite overwhelmed by the interest we received. What struck us most was how varied and rich the conversations were.

• Aged care nurses came to ask how ELDAC can support them better in their everyday practice.
• Specialist palliative care nurses spoke with us about the critical points of transition, when a person is discharged to residential aged care, or home with a Support at Home package, and the service taking over their care needs to be signposted to credible and trustworthy resources.
• Home care providers and care partners shared thoughtful reflections on how they have been using ELDAC resources to identify early decline, and to initiate the end-of-life pathway with confidence.

These diverse conversations from a wide range of settings gave us valuable insight into where ELDAC has proven most effective and where there is potential for greater impact.

Away from the exhibition floor, the program itself gave us just as much to think about.

A clear highlight was hearing Kathryn Mannix speak to the power of stories, and to how much we learn, and how well we care, when we make room for them.

It is a fitting way to describe the work we do at ELDAC. What matters most in aged care are the people behind it: the older Australians being cared for, their families, and the staff who support them at the end of life.

The task for a program like ours is to make sure that workforce has the knowledge and information to care well for every one of those stories.

One of the ways we do that is through our Knowledge Hub, which offers practical, evidence-based resources freely to the whole sector. It is the same thinking that shaped the two sessions we brought to the program ourselves.

In the first session, “University-industry partnership driving digital transformation in end-of-life care,” we shared with the audience what becomes possible when research, industry and the aged care sector build together.

The second session, “Transforming end-of-life care: Nurses leading digital change in aged care homes,” put nurses at the centre of that change. Both were very well received, and the questions that followed told us the sector is ready to move from ideas to impact, exactly as the theme intended.

We left the conference tired, full, and grateful. Thank you to PCNA for a conference that delivered on every part of its promise, and to everyone who stopped by our table to share a conversation.

We cannot wait to continue them.

 

Dr Priyanka Vandersman, Senior Research Fellow, ELDAC.