PALLIATIVE CARE EDUCATION & TRAINING COLLABORATIVE

Funded by the Australian Government Department of Health

The Program of Experience in the Palliative Approach (PEPA) is a Commonwealth funded project. PEPA aims to improve health professionals knowledge, skills and confidence in providing palliative care for people with chronic and lifelimiting illness by providing funded short observational placements and education sessions in conjunction with local Specialist Palliative Providers.

Both standard and reverse placement are available. Reverse placements, where the specialist palliative care nurse goes to the workplace and spends 2 days with 6–8 nominated staff members, is very popular at the moment. Reverse placements are a great opportunity for Aboriginal Health providers, Aged Care Facilities and Regional Hospitals.

Standard placements, where the applicant spends 2–4 days with their local specialist palliative care provider, provides a unique opportunity to spend time with a specialist palliative care team.

Have you seen the IPEPA Animated Video Series yet? There are five short films around palliative care and they explore different aspects of what happens when we are diagnosed with a life-limiting illness.

Those working in Specialist Palliative Care Services and interested in partnering up for education sessions (face to face or virtual) and/or placements are encouraged to make contact with PEPA NSW via email to discuss options.

Placement application, education opportunities, online modules, resources and contact details can be found on the PEPA Education webpage

Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration

My oh my how time flies! We are almost halfway into the year and PCOC have been busy over the past few months supporting NSW palliative care services through our virtual education program and continuous quality improvement initiatives.

Clinician’s corner: Unstable phase

This month, in clinician’s corner we are focusing all about the unstable phase. The unstable phase type, by nature of its definition, alerts clinical staff to the need for urgent changes to the patient’s plan of care or that emergency intervention is required. Those patients assessed to be in the unstable phase require intense review for a short period of time. It is usually characterised by severe Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS) Scores (i.e SAS = 8,9 or 10) or severe Palliative Care Problem Severity Scores (PCPSS) (i.e. PCPSS = 3).

Start of unstable phase

An unstable phase is triggered if a:

• patient experiences a new, unanticipated problem, and/or

• patient experiences a rapid increase in the severity of an existing problem, and/or

• patient’s family/carers experience a sudden change in circumstances that adversely impacts the patient’s care.

End of unstable phase

The patient moves out of the unstable phase in one of two ways:

• A new plan of care has been put in place, has been reviewed and does not require any additional changes. This does not necessarily mean that the symptom or crisis has been fully resolved. However, the clinical team will have a clear diagnosis and a plan for the patient’s care. In this situation, the patient will move to either the stable or deteriorating phase.

• The patient is likely to die within a matter of days. In this situation, the patient will be moved into the terminal phase.

Some questions to consider when changing an Unstable phase:

• Is there evidence of symptom improvement reflected in the patientreported SAS or PCPSS Pain score?

• Has the new plan of care been reviewed within 24 hours?

• Has this care plan addressed the issue?

Characteristics of the assessment of and response to an unstable phase:

• Problem/symptom distress requires immediate action

• Plan of care is ineffective

• Urgent intervention, referral and escalation required

• Change of care plan indicated

• Review within 24 hours.

Learn more about the Palliative Care Phase by viewing the PCOC Education - Palliative Care Phase video on YouTube.

PCOC workshops for all disciplines working in Palliative Care

PCOC’s virtual workshops will be running in June and August 2023. These workshops cater to all members of the multidisciplinary team, all clinical settings, and for the various stages of implementing and using PCOC.

Fundamentals webinar

14th June & 8th August

PCOC fundamentals webinar is a 1.5-hour program designed to enhance knowledge of the PCOC tools and PCOC assessment and response framework for newly registered services and clinicians.

Assessment and Response workshop

21st June & 22nd August

This workshop is a two-hour interactive program to support senior clinicians and clinical leads/ PCOC Champions in educating their teams and embedding the PCOC assessment and response framework effectively as part of routine care.

Advanced workshop: Using PCOC reports

28th June & 29th August

This workshop designed to increase understanding and skills in using PCOC Patient Outcome reports and supplementary information to drive quality improvement and service development.

You must be receiving a PCOC report to attend this workshop.

Registration & information

We want to make sure gain the most from our workshops so please contact lkable@uow.edu.au if you would like further information to register for the correct one to meet your education needs.

Registration and further information for these workshops is available via the PCOC Education page.

Thinking about doing a quality improvement project?

PCOC Improvement facilitators can support you in your quality plans and help write these up in a Quality Improvement report. PCOC have a number of resources available in our Quality Improvement Guide that can support audits, case reviews and QI efforts. Previous service QI reports are available on the PCOC website and include resources developed by palliative care services.

If you are interested in participating in an individualised PCOC quality improvement planning session, please contact me at lkable@uow.edu.au

These sessions aim to support services in interpreting PCOC reports and providing support to identify and progress QI activities.

eMR update

PCOC have been working collaboratively with the NSW eHealth end of life care team with the rollout of the end-of-life care solution for eMR. We are delighted to see the positive impacts this has had for palliative care services participation in PCOC. The Statewide Service Desk is the first point of call for all eMR related questions. If you have started using eMR in the past 12 months, please contact me so that we can organise a data check to ensure the clinical information you are recording is being accurately reflected in the new eMR module.