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Nurses working in specialist palliative care will cover many areas at many levels and have many different responsibilities. They may also intersect with other specialties such as Oncology, Aged Care and Chronic Disease.

Palliative care as with many other specialties has nurses working in advanced practice roles, often with a requirement of further study or qualifications. Nurse Practitioner roles are increasing and can now be found built into strategic plans.

Resources

• The Palliative Care Australia document: A Guide to Palliative Care Service Development: A population based approach has information on Specialist palliative Care. It also describes the levels of service delivery of specialist palliative care services
• Victoria also has a Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner Collaborative 
• The Gold Standards Framework (GSF) in the UK is a systematic evidence based approach to optimising the care for patients nearing the end of life delivered by generalist providers. It has an information sheet for Specialist Nurses
• MacMillan Cancer Support (UK) supports MacMillan Nurses working in cancer and in palliative care
• A copy of the full report of the document Advance Practice Nursing: Pioneering Practices in Palliative Care can be found at the DyingWell website.
• The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association of America has a position statement on the Value of Advanced Practice Nurse in Palliative Care which has been endorsed by the American Nursing Leaders (2002) as has a document Advanced Practice Nurses role in Palliative Care.

Related CareSearch page

Nurses Hub
General Resources

Free Full Text Article

Tarrant C, Sinfield P, Agarwal S, Baker R. Is seeing a specialist nurse associated with positive experiences of care? The role and value of specialist nurses in prostate cancer care. BMC Health Serv Res. 2008 Mar 27;8:65.

References

• Cruickshank S, Kennedy C, Lockhart K, Dosser I, Dallas L. Specialist breast care nurses for supportive care of women with breast cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Jan 23;(1):CD005634.
• O'Connor M, Chapman Y. The palliative care clinical nurse consultant: an essential link. Collegian. 2008;15(4):151-7.
• Chapple A, Ziebland S, McPherson A. The specialist palliative care nurse: a qualitative study of the patients' perspective. Int J Nurs Stud. 2006 Nov;43(8):1011-22. Epub 2005 Dec 20.

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Last updated 27 August 2010