For more than ten years, the Palliative Approach (PA) Toolkit has supported residential aged care facilities to implement a comprehensive, evidence-based, person-centred, and sustainable approach to palliative care. For the last five years access to this resource has been supported through the CareSearch website. Since its release in 2009, there have been many changes to the evidence base and palliAGED and End of Life Directions for Aged Care (ELDAC) now support the aged care sector. The PA Toolkit was retired on 30 June 2020 after the completion of a content transition plan. You can find more information and alternative resources here.

Some patients do not receive adequate pain and symptom relief at the end of life, causing distress to patients, families and healthcare professionals. It is unclear whether undertreatment of symptoms occurs, in part, because of nurses' concerns about legal and/or disciplinary repercussions if the patient dies after medication is administered. Dr Katrin Gerber, Professor Lindy Willmott, Professor Ben White, and Distinguished Professor Patsy Yates from Queensland University of Technology discuss the findings from their research and interviews with nurses from different clinical backgrounds and settings about their concerns when providing pain and symptom relief to patients near the end of life.

palliAGED provides palliative care practice and evidence guidance for our aged care workforce. Susan Gravier and Robyn Dutschke, Research Associates from CareSearch and palliAGED, discuss the importance of psychosocial care in providing quality palliative care and how the new palliAGED pages on the topic were developed.

Art therapy is used in palliative care to compliment a holistic approach to care and to augment traditional clinical and medical approaches. In this blog, Estelle Chapple, an Art Therapist for Central Adelaide Palliative Care, and Michelle Cripps, Director for Centre for Creative Health, discuss the impact of art therapy in palliative care settings.

The last five years has seen major change in aged care policy directions and regulation. In this blog, CareSearch and palliAGED Director Professor Jennifer Tieman discusses the importance of reviewing and consolidating aged care resources to ensure currency, relevance, and ease of access, and how palliAGED responds to the varied and changing contexts in which care is provided.