Oral Presentation Palliative Care Nurses Australia Conference 2022

PallConsult: Queensland-wide 24/7 specialist palliative care support for primary healthcare providers. (#23)

Liz Reymond 1 2 , Lesley McLeod 1 , Ben Sankey 1 , Jayne Henderson 1
  1. Brisbane South Palliative Care Collaborative, Queensland Health, Eight Mile Plains, Qld, Australia
  2. School of Medicine, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Qld, Australia

Background:

Queensland Health (QH) is committed to improving health services for Queenslanders in areas of need including community-based end-of-life care, especially in rural and remote parts of the State. QH has funded PallConsult to help meet this need statewide.

Aim:

PallConsult aims to build capacity within generalist community workforce to provide quality end-of-life care and support equitable access to home-based care by providing clinicians with advice, quality resources and education.

Methods:

Three integrated service arms were developed:

  • Two 24/7 on-call telephone specialist advice hotlines
  • Provision of best-practice end-of-life care resources suitable for community settings
  • Vocational upskilling focusing on RACFs.

Findings:

In 20 months, over 1500 calls have been received.

Developed clinical resources are in demand e.g., PallConsult NIKI T34TM syringe-driver packages have been viewed over 18,700 times and downloaded 10,322.

Seven hundred and twenty-five (725) education sessions have been conducted across all Queensland Hospital and Health Services (HHS), 5,500 clinicians attending face-to-face and 2,100 virtually. Seventy-five percent (487/648) of all face-to-face educational activities have occurred in regional and remote locations.

Discussion:

Calls to the hotlines are increasing. Over 50% (820) of calls, have been received from HHSs that do not have a specialist palliative care service and more than 62% (972) have been received from GPs, paramedics, community-based nurses and RACF staff

The demand for practical, clinical end-of-life care resources and education has exceeded early assumptions of need. Clinical feedback is informing future resource and education development with clinicians requesting standardised quality approaches to care across government and non-government services. 

Education and extensive networking has been effective in increasing capacity to provide quality end-of-life care evidenced by approximately 50% more Advance Care Planning documents being received and uploaded to The Viewer from regional, rural and remote HHS’s since the Project began

Conclusion:

PallConsult is increasing community-based palliative care capacity across Queensland. It achieves this by servicing an unmet need and building confidence and knowledge to provide quality community-based end-of-life care. It is a flexible service that adapts to emergent clinical need and provides an economic after-hours back-up palliative care service for clinicians in Queensland.

Funding acknowledgement

This project is funded by Queensland Health.