National Palliative Care Standards

The National Palliative Care Standards are a set of voluntary standards, intended to guide healthcare providers to deliver high-quality palliative care for the person receiving care, their family and carers.

These Standards have been informed by the review of evidence and consultations nationally across the healthcare sector. They recognise that caring for people who are approaching and reaching the end of life is everybody’s business – everybody in health, aged and social care has a role to play.

The Standards are relevant to sole practitioners, as well as to larger tertiary acute hospitals and specialist service providers – and to everything in between. They are generally normative standards but also incorporate aspirational components to support providers and services seeking to enhance capability and achieve best practice.

The focus of the Standards is the provision of quality palliative across a range of settings. To ensure this, we have two sets of Standards – one for Specialist Palliative Care and the other for All Health Professionals and Aged Care Services.