Residential Aged Care

  • This hub of information and resources will
    soon close. We are consolidating palliative
    care evidence and resources for aged care
    in the palliAGED website. From September
    2019 you will be redirected to resources in
    palliAGED based on content from the RAC
    Hub. To find out more visit the RAC Hub
    Project page.
  • This hub of information and resources
    has closed. We have consolidated
    our palliative care evidence and
    resources for aged care in the
    palliAGED website.
    To find out more continue reading or
    visit the RAC Hub Project page.

 

The RAC Hub was developed by CareSearch in collaboration with Aged Care stakeholders and launched in 2011 drawing on the work used to develop the APRAC Guidelines. It was one of the first web resources focusing on palliative care in aged care facilities and led the way in connecting the aged care workforce with quality evidence. Since then more than a million page-views have been recorded for this section. Over this period the Australian government has demonstrated ongoing commitment to the aged care sector and the importance of evidence by continuing to fund CareSearch throughout this period.

In 2017, the palliAGED website was launched. palliAGED was funded by the Department of Health to provide a new form of palliative care guidance for aged care – both residential aged care and home care. It was designed to update and replace the APRAC and COMPAC Guidelines (485kb pdf).

As part of our current work program we have completed a review of the role of the RAC Hub in CareSearch. One of the aims of this review was to consolidate content to create a single source for evidence based palliative care guidance for aged care. Driven by the need to provide easy access to evidence and resources as quickly as possible we have been working with the palliAGED Advisory Group and the CareSearch Advisory Group to finalise a plan.

The RAC Hub content has now been reviewed, updated, revised, and relocated where appropriate according to the following broad schema:

  1. Facility Issues has moved to the Australian Context pages and now includes an expanded section on policy including a policy timeline providing one-stop access to key documents relevant to aged care and palliative care policy development.

  2. Care Issues and Communication content as well as some single topic pages found elsewhere in the RAC Hub have been used as a basis to develop a set of palliAGED Practice Tip Sheets for Careworkers and nurses.

  3. RAC Hub content on Working in RAC has been transferred to the palliAGED Practice Centre under Practice Roles.

  4. palliAGED Education and Training section has undergone a major expansion and now complements the CareSearch Education section by providing access to online opportunities for the aged care sector including and related to palliative care.

  5. Content from the RAC Hub For Residents and Families section has been transferred to the palliAGED For the Community section on Residential Aged Care.

  6. Content from the Literature and Resources section has been transferred to the palliAGED Finding and Using Evidence Section.

With completion of this transfer in September 2019, RAC Hub was closed and our many visitors redirected to the new content within palliAGED. This has opened new opportunities for CareSearch to further evolve in response to community need and we will be providing more information on this through our CareSearch Products pages in 2020.

The planned 2020 closure of the Palliative Approach (PA) Toolkit which is currently hosted by CareSearch is also relevant to this project and you can read more about this on palliAGED.

For those looking for evidence-based information on palliative care for older people we look forward to supporting you through palliAGED.