Palliative care has a rich research tradition that informs clinical practice and service delivery. It draws on methodologies and approaches from many different disciplines reflecting the multidisciplinary approach to care. Importantly it also examines the lived experience of patients, carers, families and communities. There is a growing focus on palliative care research in the context of ageing and aged care and a growing body of evidence to support care and practice.
The National Palliative Care Program has funded a series of projects relevant to aged care. The Department of Health and Aged Care has also funded a project through the PHNs Greater Choice for At Home Palliative Care measure and in collaboration with states and territories: Comprehensive Palliative Care in Aged Care measure. Market research undertaken by the Department of Health and Aged Care explored opportunities to provide high-quality palliative care in the primary care and aged care workforces. It also highlighted the need to build awareness of existing training and education opportunities.
Finding palliative care aged care evidence
CareSearch is funded by the Australian government to provide nationally available websites to connect health professionals and the general public with trustworthy, evidence-based information and resources in palliative care. CareSearch is also responsible for the palliAGED website and its resources. Together they provide access to a range of a palliative care resources and to research evidence.
CareSearch provides the following evidence resources:
- The Evidence centre provides an overview of how research supports the evidence base in palliative care and how it relates to your role and needs.
- Clinical evidence summaries provide synopses of syntheses (summaries of information found in systematic reviews). This collection of topics offers the best available evidence relevant to assessment and management of symptoms in the person with palliative care needs. The evidence is formally appraised for inclusion.
- The Review collection provides access to a curated collection of reviews in palliative care. It includes specific palliative review collections related to older people, careworkers, residential aged care facilities, and people with dementia.
palliAGED houses a suite of palliative care evidence resources relevant to aged care:
- The Evidence Centre provides summaries of aged care evidence on a range of topics relevant to care of older people and delivery of aged care services.
- The Finding Evidence section helps aged care source the best evidence available for palliative care and end-of-life care in aged care. To get started with searching for new or very specific evidence in palliative care, access the PubMed literature search pages to guide your searches using filters developed by expert librarians.
Page created 29 October 2024