Palliative Care Conversations – Project Evaluation

INTRODUCTION

In 2014, the Southern Metropolitan Region Palliative Care Consortium (SMRPCC) identified the need to assist non-palliative care health professionals in the region to gain an improved understanding and skills in referring to palliative care. The consortium established an advisory group comprising a range of health professionals within and outside the palliative care sector. A comprehensive training resource, including a facilitators guide, PowerPoint slides, a timetable, handouts and a pre-and post-evaluation was developed. The program was piloted, evaluated and a train-the-trainer workshop presented at the 2015 Palliative Care Australia Conference in Melbourne. Following the conference, the program was made available for free to interested organisations.

In 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services released the ‘Victoria’s End of Life and Palliative Care Framework’ and within this document determined their priority areas. Priority Four, ‘Quality end of life and palliative care is everyone’s responsibility’ emphasises the responsibilities of the whole health sector to possess the skills to have appropriate conversations about end of life and understand how to initiate care and support for people with a terminal illness, their family and caregivers.

In order to address Priority Four of the Framework, the consortium decided to undertake a project to roll out the ‘Palliative Care Conversation’ training across the southern metropolitan region and evaluate not only the individual sessions, but also undertake a follow up evaluation to ascertain whether participation in the training resulted in practice change and to identify any additional barriers.

Project Evaluation (984kb pdf)