Blog

Advance care planning ensures the preferences of aged care recipients for future care are known and respected by those providing this care. In this blog, Dr Catherine Joyce and Lesley Habel discuss the importance of advance care planning and offer practical advice on how to start and conduct these conversations with older people and their families.  

A recent Australian study explored the experiences of 56 residential aged care staff in providing end-of-life care to people with advanced dementia. Madeleine Juhrmann, Jon San Martin and Josephine Clayton of HammondCare explain what this research discovered and suggests some implications for aged care.  

Care provider ability to recognising when a person is at risk of deteriorating or dying is an important skill in providing quality care. Dr David Marco describes the findings of a research study into nurses’ use of one prognostic tool – SPICT – on general medicine wards.

Caregivers of individuals with advanced dementia frequently resort to emergency departments for symptom management when palliative care services are inaccessible. Dr Janice Du Preez shares insights from an ongoing trial aimed at uncovering the barriers driving ED admissions and impeding access to specialised palliative care for people living with dementia in both home and residential settings.

Dementia is a life-limiting condition, yet the palliative care needs of people living with dementia often go unrecognised and unassessed. Wendy Hall explains the role of the Dementia Doula, a model of care that ensures people with dementia and their families receive high-quality, responsive, and person-centred palliative care in community and aged care settings.