Sector news

The last five years has seen major change in aged care policy directions and regulation. In this blog, CareSearch and palliAGED Director Professor Jennifer Tieman discusses the importance of reviewing and consolidating aged care resources to ensure currency, relevance, and ease of access, and how palliAGED responds to the varied and changing contexts in which care is provided.

Technological advances are enabling the integration of mobile healthcare Apps into the self-management plans for people living with various chronic and complex conditions. Priyanka Bhattarai discusses her research into investigating if self-management Apps are a feasible and acceptable modality to assist older people in the community to better manage their arthritic pain. The potential extension of this to palliative care is also discussed.

Translating research into practice and policy is an international priority. However, despite our best efforts, research findings often fail to be translated into practice. Translating knowledge into clinical care can also take a very long time, which when it comes to palliative care may be too late. So what can help us translate knowledge into practice more quickly? Barbara Daveson from PCOC (Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration) discusses knowledge translation and how it can help to improve outcomes in palliative care.

Many palliative care services are involved in quality improvement (QI) activities to make healthcare safer, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient and equitable. Professor Jennifer Tieman and Dr Katrina Erny-Albrecht from CareSearch discusses different QI approaches and the importance of evaluating these approaches to improve quality care. 

With the vast health information available in the internet and social media, how do we support health consumers get trustworthy information? In 2017, we at CareSearch conducted a survey looking at how members of the community search for and use online health information, including palliative and end-of-life care. Joao Boavida Ferreira a guest MD from Portugal working with Southern Adelaide Palliative Services and Flinders University, CareSearch, discusses the findings of the survey.

The use of evidence in allied health is evolving and more allied health professionals are now becoming involved in research training, knowledge generation, knowledge translation, evidence implementation and policy setting. Matt Ransom from the International Centre for Allied Health Evidence (iCAHE) discusses the importance of using evidence-based practice within allied health and the resources that exist to help allied health professionals access the evidence.