Palliative Care

What is palliative care?

Palliative care focuses on providing the best quality of life for anyone of any age, living with a life-limiting condition. It identifies a person’s physical, emotional, spiritual and social needs.

Palliative care can be provided at home, hospital, aged care facility or anywhere you live. The team of carers may include your GP, aged care worker, community nurses, other medical professionals and family and friends.

Who can have palliative care?

Palliative care can be provided for anyone of any age with a life-limiting condition including increased frailty due to advanced age, chronic and incurable illnesses, and disabilities.

It can generally be provided from the moment a person is diagnosed and may be appropriate for illnesses where life expectancy is weeks, months or even several years.

What is a palliative approach?

A palliative approach emphasises improving quality of life by addressing people’s needs and preferences as they approach death and to provide bereavement support for families.

Who provides palliative care?

Palliative Care may be provided by a team of carers including your GP, aged care workers, community nurses, other medical professionals and also includes family and friends.

What is specialist palliative care?

Specialist palliative care services provide consultative or ongoing care for people living with life-limiting illness. The specialist service builds on the palliative approach adopted by primary health providers. Specialist palliative care delivers a higher level of expertise in complex symptom control, grief, loss and bereavement.

Specialist palliative care teams usually include doctors, nurses, social workers, occupational, speech and physiotherapists, counsellors or psychologists and volunteers. Community teams based in Hobart, Launceston and Burnie will visit people at home. Liaison staff work in the Royal Hobart Hospital, Launceston General Hospital and NW General Hospital. The teams are part of the Tasmanian Health Service.

Other home based services (community nurses, GPs and other community based services) continue to provide regular services, linking with specialist palliative care to ensure a person’s needs are being met.

Where is palliative care provided?

A palliative approach to care can be provided in a person’s own home, in residential care facilities, in acute and district hospitals and in specialist palliative care units or hospices. Where someone receives care depends on their situation at any particular time – symptom issues, level of community and family support available, mobility and access, emotional support.

Is it possible to die at home?

Yes, people can be supported to die at home. Equipment, nursing, medical and other services can be provided. The assistance of family and other community supports is important to maintain care at home over the last days of life.

What support is available to family and friends to care at home?

Home supports include cleaning and domestic services, respite care so carers can take a break, overnight support to avoid hospital admission, social work for emotional support, occupational and physiotherapists to assist with mobility and equipment advice, volunteers for respite, emotional and practical assistance.

What should I expect in a palliative care unit?

Specialist palliative care units may be stand-alone or part of a larger hospital. They may be one or two rooms or they may be a whole unit. Often there is direct access to a garden or other outside areas. Generally they will provide facilities for families to visit at any time of day or night and to stay over in the patient’s room. Usually there will be a space to make a drink and a simple snack or meal, and to take a break from sitting by the bedside.

Doctors will usually visit daily, and there is access to physiotherapists, psychologists or counsellors, social workers, occupational and speech therapists. Volunteers offer practical and emotional support to patients and their families/visitors.

Specialist palliative care units are not just places where people die. Many people will come in for a short time to have complex symptom management issues resolved or to give respite to family carers. These people are likely to return home. They may or may not return to the specialist unit.