The issues for patients in remote and rural settings vary greatly with the availability of health care resources and the experience and confidence of local GPs and other health care workers in providing palliative care.
Specific challenges include the distances to travel when providing doing home visits, lack of availability of allied health services and an undersupply of GPs in rural areas. Inpatient palliative care is most often provided in community hospitals, with GPs managing all aspects of their patients’ care at the end-of-life. Areas of need are often served by overseas trained doctors who may come to palliative care with different cultural perspectives.
Accessing specialist advice
- Many rural areas are supported with a link to a metropolitan specialist palliative care team via the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program (MSOAP). It encourages rural GPs to develop a relationship with a particular palliative care service. Individual patients can be reviewed during MSOAP visits, while palliative care advice can also be given by phone and is available round the clock by contacting the MSOAP specialist or the on call doctor for the MSOAP team.
- MSOAP visits can also be used as an opportunity to provide in-service education to the health care team – either case based or related to specific topics of interest or concern.
- If no MSOAP arrangements exist, the nearest specialist palliative care service can be contacted for advice and support regarding individual patients. Providing this support for GPs and other health care workers is part of the responsibility of a specialist (level 3) palliative care service. (See page 39)
- Nursing advice regarding palliative care patients can be sought by contacting nursing staff at the nearest specialist palliative care inpatient unit.
Rural Palliative Care Program
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This page was created on 26 May 2009 and is due for review in May 2011.