Palliative care provides high-quality health care to people living with a life-limiting illness to live as well as they can by focusing on their physical, psychological, cultural, social and spiritual needs. Palliative care that takes a person-centred approach to care will ensure all client needs are met.
All clients identified as end of life using the SPICTTM tool should have a palliative care needs assessment. The life experiences of a person such as age, culture, religion, ethnicity or experience should be considered.
Re-assessment should occur regularly and at key transition points in the client’s trajectory, for example:
palliAGED offers complete sets of downloadable Practice Tips for Nurses (pdf 1.9MB) and Careworkers (pdf 2.9MB).
The Palliative Care Needs Assessment Guidance was developed by the National Clinical Programme for Palliative Care and is a framework that considers needs across four domains:
If your service uses electronic notes you may already have these domains within your clinical system. Similarly, your hard copy notes may address these issues. Review your system and see if all the domains are covered. Within each of these domains there are some specific tools or scales that might be useful to understand the needs of the client and their family. The Assessment Tools section provides information on these domains.
Watch the ELDAC Assess Palliative Care Needs educational video will help you to describe the importance of person-centred and holistic assessment; identify the four domains of wellbeing used in palliative care assessment and recognise the importance of care planning to support end of life care.
Each client will have an individual symptom profile and a comprehensive assessment is required.
The Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS) can be used as a self-report tool and provides a report of whether a symptom is present and indication of impact of that symptom. The SAS is based on a rating scale of seven common symptoms and has space to add additional symptoms. The Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) has a brochure explaining the Symptom Assessment Scale (168kb docx).
Where a symptom has been identified further assessment using valid and reliable tools, if available, should be used to identify the underlying cause of the symptom and further details. The following is a suggested list of tools for common symptoms. You may have some of these in your electronic or hard copy files.
This domain is based around family support, emotional and social support and practical concerns.
The client's life biography assists in providing person-centred care, particularly for clients with cognitive impairment or dementia. There are a range of tools that can be used to identify the person’s biography and your service may already have a template as part of the admission and assessment process.
The Lasting Tale webpage from Palliative Care Australia (PCA) includes resources such as a free audio life story app and examples of life story questions to ask clients.
Clients at the end of life should be assessed for any issues that are worrying them. In particular, awareness of the possibility of psychological concerns such as anxiety, depression or previous mental health issues.
The final domain is about assessing the spiritual needs of clients. palliAGED provides a summary of spiritual care.
A person’s spiritual care includes faiths, cultures, beliefs, and traditions and is the right of older people to express their spirituality in a way that is meaningful for them. The identification of spiritual needs and offering of basic spiritual care is the responsibility of all aged care workers and should be done in ways that are appropriate to their role.
Meaningful Ageing Australia developed the National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care, (831kb pdf) which gives an overview of some key spiritual needs of older people, including the five domains of spiritual care.
It is also important for carers to identify their own needs and the level of concern they cause. CareSearch has information addressing carers’ needs including information on how to look after yourself, which includes tips and links to websites and factsheets.
Needs Assessment Tool for Carers (NAT-CC - Caring for you) (149kb pdf) University of Queensland The NAT-CC is a self-reported tool for carers supporting someone with a chronic illness. The tool identifies the care needs of someone living with a chronic condition, and the level of concern this causes the carer. This provides prompts for the carer and/or the health professional to discuss these issues.