A pilot study for the delivery of an interactive strategy aimed at increasing the palliative care capacity of primary health care providers working in rural and remote areas of Australia

Aim: To pilot and evaluate an interactive support strategy aimed at increasing the palliative care capacity of primary health-care providers working in rural and remote areas of Australia.

Method: The project is based on workshops delivered at four different rural and remote sites in far north Queensland. The workshops will involve as many members of the local primary health-care team as practicable. Relevant team members are expected to include people such as GPs, nurses, allied health professionals, Aboriginal health workers, volunteers, counsellors, pastoral care workers and other therapists working across community, hospital and residential aged-care environments. Some workshop sessions will include all participants while others will be profession or topic specific. Initially, potential participants will be asked to complete and return a self-administered questionnaire. Responses will be used to tailor workshop content, based on local clinical cases and issues, for each particular site. In addition the research officer, with input from other local health care professionals, will use questionnaire data to produce a local palliative service directory and resource document for distribution. The workshop intervention will be primarily evaluated using repeated measures questionnaires that are profession specific. Differences in responses to pre and post-workshop questionnaires will be analysed quantitatively and qualitatively.

Findings: To date, four sites have been chosen to run workshops: Thursday Island, Cooktown, Atherton, and Mareeba. The first workshop - on Thursday Island - has already been held; the remaining three will be held in June.

Many thanks to the Queensland Cancer Fund for supporting this study.