Online Training

End of Life Law for Clinicians (ELLC) is a training program for clinicians to improve knowledge about end of life law to enhance your capacity to manage legal issues in end of life decision-making, leading to improved quality of care and practice. This includes decisions that happen in the ‘last days and months of life’, and the planning and decision-making that happens before this (e.g. before a person has an illness or injury). Online modules include:

• The role of law in end of life care
• Capacity and consent to medical treatment
• Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment
• Advance Care Planning and Advance Care Directives
• Substitute decision-making for medical treatment
• Legal protection for providing pain and symptom relief
• Futile or non-beneficial treatment
• Emergency treatment for adults
• Managing conflict
• Voluntary assisted dying
• Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples and end of life law

The online modules are free and registration is required to gain access to the e-Learning on this website.

The Advance Project^® has developed resources and training specifically on dementia. This includes e-Learning designed for registered and enrolled nurses, allied health staff, manager and care coordinators working across care settings. There are 9 modules in the course that will take about 4 hours to complete. While the course is free you need to enrol.

Dementia Training Australia (DTA) offers an extensive free online library of courses and individual modules for the Australian aged care workforce. Registration is required to access the free resources catering to a range of knowledge and skills, which are labelled as introductory, foundational and enhanced practice levels.

The DTA courses that are most relevant to providing palliative care for people living with dementia are listed below. Course modules have to be completed in order.

The View from Here: Skills in aged and community dementia care

• Module 1: The brain and dementia
• Module 2: A person-centred approach to care​
• Module 3: Communication strategies

Understanding Changed Behaviour

• Module 1: What are changed behaviours?
• Module 2: Identifying and collecting information
• Module 3: Planning and implementing strategies
• Module 4: Evaluating effectiveness of strategies
• Module 5: Case study – wandering behaviour
• Module 6: Case study – anxiety and depression
• Module 7: Case study – aggressive behaviour

Recognising and acting on pain in people living with dementia for direct care workers

• Module 1: The recognition of pain for direct care workers
• Module 2: Assessing pain for direct care workers
• Module 3: Pain management strategies for direct care workers

The pain puzzle: Recognition, assessment and treatment of pain in people living with dementia. This is a more detailed course than the pain course listed above and focuses on residential aged care.

• Module 1: Recognition of pain
• Module 2: Assessment of pain
• Module 3: Treatment and management of pain

Reducing medicines in people living with dementia

• Module 1: Polypharmacy
• Module 2: Deprescribing

Minimising use of antipsychotic medications for responsive behaviour

• Module 1: Understanding the limited role of using antipsychotics
• Module 2: Appropriate use of antipsychotics when prescribed as a restrictive practice

The Equip Aged Care Learning Modules produced by the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre at the University of Tasmania are freely available for anyone interested in the aged care sector.

There are introductory modules for those new to the sector and also refresher modules for those familiar with aged care. A range of aged care related topics are covered including supporting people living with dementia and palliative care and the end of life.