workforce
Better end of life care
Interactive toolkits set to improve end of life care.
Patsy Yates interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Health and aged care professionals who provide care to older Australians at end of life now have access to a new resource that aims to give them the right tools for the job.
End of Life Directions for Aged Care( ELDAC) includes interactive toolkits providing clinical evidence, learning opportunities and organisational tools.
The $ 15 million Department of Healthfunded project is aimed at workers in residential aged care, home care, general practice, primary health networks, palliative care services and allied health.
Project lead Professor Patsy Yates, from the Queensland University of Technology, said it aims to reduce avoidable hospital admissions, shorten hospital stays, and improve quality of care for people in residential and community aged care settings.
“ ELDAC is designed to increase understanding and awareness of advance care planning and specialist care in aged care, and to connect the various services so they could work together to improve palliative care,” Yates said.
“ It will equip care providers to give high quality, end of life care in familiar surroundings with little or no need for hospitalisation.”
ELDAC includes five interactive toolkits that help users to develop a plan and follow evidence-based recommendations or practices in aged care, home care, primary care, partnerships and legal and policy areas.
It also provides users with a free-call phone advisory service during office hours and a 24 / 7 web-based navigation service with state-specific information.
Pat Sparrow, chief executive of project partner Aged & Community Services Australia, said the resources will help GPs, nurses and other palliative and aged care workers manage in the best possible way what is a highly sensitive stage of life for older Australians and their families.
“ These toolkits represent a practical and meaningful use of the insights into palliative care gathered through extensive consultation with professionals at the front line of palliative care services, including aged care providers,” Sparrow said.
The consortium conducting the project also includes Flinders University, the University of Technology Sydney, and partners Palliative Care Australia, Leading Age Services Australia, Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association and Catholic Health Australia.
Aged Care Insite spoke to Yates to find out more about the ELDAC interactive toolkits.
ACI: What areas of end of life care or advance care planning are health and aged care professionals unsure about? PY: I think one of the most important areas is simply having conversations about end of life care issues.
I think aged care workers are concerned about their skill and whether or not they’ re able to do everything they can for the people they care for. Also, aged care workers sometimes don’ t really know where to go to get help and advice about how to deal with what can be really complex issues.
What does ELDAC offer users? We’ ve built five toolkits as a starting point. ELDAC is a project that’ s being funded for three years. We hope this is a sustainable, long-lasting opportunity to transform the end of life care in aged care settings and community and residential settings.
But how does it build? We’ ve got five different toolkits. Some apply specifically to practice-based issues; one tailored to home care; one tailored to residential care, and what’ s included in that toolkit is a lot of information and guides, resources, about the sorts of day-to-day practice issues that are important to the end of life, and it builds on other resources by linking places to where you might find additional evidence and those sorts of things.
We’ ve got another toolkit that’ s focused on primary care. That one’ s really tailored to people like general practitioners or practice nurses who may be also involved in supporting older people at end of life in the community or in residential care.
We’ ve got a fourth toolkit which is focused on legal issues. This one’ s really bringing together information that can help because a lot of people often have questions on the legal requirements about end of life. This one’ s a neat, easily accessible source of information and advice about those issues.
The fifth toolkit is called Working Together. End of life care really draws on people across different sectors – so working in aged care, social services, GP, hospital settings – and that one is really focused more at those organisational levels, about how as organisations you can build strong partnerships and bring all the different sectors together to make it happen well.
Using these toolkits, how can health and aged care professionals make a difference to people in aged care? For example, looking at the toolkits for home and residential care, there is information that can help you provide the best evidence-based care to help an older person as they deal with decreasing functional status, or deal with pain problems at end of life.
It also has some really good evidencebased tips on how to have conversations about end of life.
And as I said, our Working Together toolkit is aimed at an organisation level. So if I was the manager, who do I go to and how might I go about developing good collaborative partnerships that can bring everything together to get that best possible care for my clients or residents? ■
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