Provide Palliative Care
What does providing palliative care look like in practice?
The Palliative Care Service Development Guidelines by Palliative Care Australia state that palliative care:
- provides relief from pain
- affirms life and regards dying as a normal process
- intends neither to hasten or postpone death
- integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
- offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
- uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated
- will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness
- is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.
What is my role as a primary care professional in providing palliative care?
People will have different levels of need for palliative care. While those with less complex care needs may be managed in the primary care setting, those with more complex needs may require care from across health services, demanding a collaborative multidisciplinary team. As a primary care professional, you may both directly provide care and coordinate and support care between different providers.
This section of the Toolkit is for the direct provision of care. You can see more about multidisciplinary care teams and the coordination of care in the Work Together section of the Primary Care Toolkit.
We want you to be equipped to:
- Understand what your role and responsibilities are in the provision of palliative care in primary care.
- Effectively identify and manage symptoms as they arise.
- Be prepared for serious complications and emergencies.
- Appropriately manage medications.
- Consider when and what procedures and investigations are appropriate, given the needs of the older person and their care goals.
- Provide care in and across diverse settings, including in residential aged care, at home, and in the community.
- Consider and prepare for the different needs of older people within diverse population groups.
- Be familiar with setting up and using syringe drivers across diverse settings, including how to educate family members or carers on how to organise for at-home care.
- Support the older person and their families by providing information and resources on palliative care delivery.