CareSearch updates

Thank you

The CareSearch project is supported by a talented and hardworking team of academics and professional staff.

Having decided to take up an opportunity in medical Education, Dr Raechel Damarell is leaving her role as the Senior Research Fellow for the CareSearch and palliAGED team. We thank her for her significant achievements in our projects in particular delivering the palliAGED Evidence Centre and the Improving Care content.

Dr Madeleine Juhrmann has also taken up a new position and finished her time as a CareSearch project Research Fellow.

Welcome

Making sure we still have great talent in the project team, we would like to welcome the following new team members:

• Dr Seth Nicholls who has taken up the Research Fellow role supporting CareSearch and palliAGED.  

• Dr Angela Rong Yang Zhang has also joined the research team helping us analyse data and prepare some new resources.  

• We also welcome Becky Kwok who joined us as the new Marketing Officer on 13 August.

With these changes, Professor Jennifer Tieman has taken over the leadership of the CareSearch and palliAGED project team and looks forwarding to meeting with the sector at the Oceanic and Ageing Australia Conferences.

The Dying to Know campaign 2025 invites Australians to face the realities of death with openness and intention. Through the Dying2Learn MOOC, CareSearch has helped spark honest discussions about death, legacy, and what truly matters, conversations that can benefit people at any stage of life. At July’s International Positive Psychology Association World Congress in Brisbane, Dying2Learn facilitator Dr Lauren Miller-Lewis highlighted how talking about legacy can make conversations about death easier and more meaningful. Want to know more? Dying2Learn resources are available anytime on the CareSearch website.

The CareSearch team is currently recruiting palliative care academic and clinical educators for a multi-methods study exploring how they value and use clinical evidence in their teaching. It is hoped that findings from a series of questionnaires and interviews will give us a better picture of the contribution made by CareSearch’s recently redeveloped and updated evidence resources to sector education, training, and service provision. This Ethics-approved study will run across June and July, with findings expected later in 2025.

The CareSearch team had a strong presence at the recent European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) Conference held in Helsinki, Finland. Professor Jennifer Tieman, CareSearch Director, presented a poster showcasing our work in developing an impact framework for online palliative care resources - an initiative that is shaping how we define and measure the influence of the CareSearch website and its tools. A second poster, featuring a study on intergenerational co-residence in palliative care led by Dr Madeleine Juhrmann and Dr Raechel Damarell, was recognised as one of the top five posters of the conference. Team members returned with fresh insights and renewed energy for advancing palliative care research and practice.

This research aimed to assess the value of an online palliative care knowledge resource (CareSearch) and online palliative care information more broadly from the perspective of key stakeholder organisations. A pragmatic, qualitative analytical approach was used to examine the interviews. Five themes emerged: Access, Demographic and cultural milieu, Political, policy and systemic context, Role and utility of CareSearch, and Palliative and end-of-life care research and evidence base (Quality). Interviewees were emphatic that the provision of high-quality, open access online information about palliative care and end-of-life issues was ‘critically important’, particularly in view of the ageing of Australia’s population, consequent future growth in demand for palliative care services, and ongoing health and aged care workforce shortages.
The study was approved by the Flinders University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project ID: 5710)

CareSearch is currently conducting an online survey to find out how health professionals and the community look for and use online health information including online information about palliative and end of life care.

To help ensure that CareSearch can continue to support those at end of life by providing trustworthy, evidence-based information on palliative care to health professionals and the community, we are seeking feedback on this important online resource and invite you to participate in the survey.

Participation is anonymous, and the survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

To participate, please click on the link. https://qualtrics.flinders.edu.au/jfe/form/SV_9QQqppTohdhjdxY