CareSearch News

It’s just days away until we launch the new CareSearch Portal. You can still register for the online event to learn how the portal was built and how it will support patients, families, health professionals, and communities to make informed decisions.  

Hosted by CareSearch Director Professor Jennifer Tieman, the launch will feature the following speakers: 

• Judith Leeson AM
• Ms Helena Kyriazopoulos, CEO, Multicultural Communities Council of SA
• Professor Leeroy William, President, Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine
• Professor Virginia Lewis, Research Chair, Australian Institute for Primary Care and Ageing
• Dr Katrina Erny-Albrecht, Senior Research Fellow, CareSearch.

Along with the launch, we will be featuring a refreshed CareSearch brand which highlights the different sectors we work with.

Keeping a dying person comfortable at home requires GP involvement, and nursing and pharmacy inputs.  CareSearch has new resources to support GPs in caring for a dying person at home, including the Checklist - Planning for an expected home death (235kb pdf).  

The CareSearch Project is proud to once again support Palliative Care Australia's (PCA) biannual conference. As a keynote sponsor for this year's Oceanic Palliative Care Conference, we will hold an exhibit booth and chair two sessions:

• Palliative care and COVID-19, 10 September at 2:15 pm AEST, chaired by CareSearch Director Prof Jennifer Tieman
• Caring for older persons, 9 September at 1:30 pm AEST, chaired by CareSearch Senior Research Fellow Dr Katrina Erny-Albrecht

Our booth will feature free resources, information on the launch of our new portal, and an interactive poll. We will also be featuring blogs from conference scholars. Visit the conference website to register.

Our Palliative Care and COVID-19 Hub has list of resources and information to support health professionals, care staff, and the wider community during this pandemic. 

The hub features resources on issues such as caring for the dying and seriously ill, decision-making, infection control, communication, and self-care. It also has tailored sections for GPs and primary care, nurses, allied health professionals, hospitals, aged care, paediatrics, and a list of some of the latest COVID-19 research articles in palliative care. 

The current COVID-19 restrictions are impacting many of us in Australia. Given the changing circumstances, we are postponing the launch of our new CareSearch portal to September 2021. This will enable us to focus on supporting our community. 

Our current website is still available 24/7 and you can email us at caresearch@flinders.edu.au in case you have questions or feedback. We will post regular updates as the launch date draws near.

In the meantime, please take care and keep safe.

palliAGED has released new sections for pharmacists and nurses caring for older persons with palliative care needs. The new For Pharmacists section lists resources that are relevant to contemporary Australian pharmacy practice and the potential role of pharmacists in palliative care. The new For Nurses section features resources for best practice palliative care based on the evidence identified and appraised by palliAGED.

Our new CareSearch Portal is coming together quickly. When completed, the portal will be home to a Community Centre, a Centre for Health Professionals, and an Evidence and Translation Centre. 

For stage 1, the CareSearchCommunity will be launched in August 2021. This Centre will house new resources for the community as well as our familiar and trusted information for patients and families.

During Stage 2, we will update and bring across the remaining CareSearch resources - our Health Professional Centre, and the Education and Evidence resources. They will be released as part of the new site in October 2021.

We will then move to finalise Stage 3, an expanded Evidence and Translation Centre updating and redefining our current Finding Evidence and Clinical Evidence resources. This will be released in early 2022.

So, in August, you will have your first experience of the new portal with the release of CareSearchCommunity. From August to October 2021, our content will be on two sites - CareSearchCommunity and the existing CareSearch site, which will continue to provide you with access to our Health Professional, Evidence, and Education resources. We will be providing hyperlinks between the two sites to ensure you move seamlessly between the two sets of resources. But if you do have any trouble accessing or finding resources, please let us know and we will help you locate them.

To mark the launch of CareSearchCommunity, an online event will be held on the 3rd of August 2021 at 10:30 AM ACST. You will be able to find out more about the resources and the way we have developed our content. We invite you to come and share the excitement. Email us at caresearch@flinders.edu.au for more registration details. 

The National COVID-19 Bereavement Project, funded by the Medical Research Future Fund is looking at the mental health outcomes and service needs of over 2,000 Australians bereaved from any cause during 2020. If you are willing to participate,  the study involves a 30-minute anonymous online survey that asks about your experience of bereavement, the kind of support (if any) you have received and wanted, what has been most helpful and least helpful for you, and any other comments you would like to make.

Complete the survey