Palliative care is more than just end of life.

Our bodies weren’t designed to live forever and death, whilst sad is inevitable for everyone. Empower clinicians are in a privileged role where they know their clients well, and can recognise changes as they near end of life.

Signs of deterioration in a client’s condition or behaviour can be a signal to start the conversation about end of life and dying. Our clinicians are trained to look for changes different to the persons norm. These conversations can be difficult and companies like PEPA help normalise the topic and remove the fear from emotionally difficult conversations.

PEPA is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and provides palliative care education and training. Our RAC clinicians attend the program to learn how to provide high quality and effective care to people in the final phase of life.

Listen to some outtakes from the program.

The WHO (2017) define palliative care as

“.. an approach that improves the quality of life of individuals and their families facing the problems associated with life-limiting illnesses, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and the treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychological and spiritual”.

The difference between palliative care and end of life care is;

Palliative is a holistic medical treatment regime over time. It ensures the best quality of life for anyone with a life limiting illness.
End of life – is terminal care.

There are different decline trajectories in palliative care and having an Advance Care Plan in place for all scenarios makes discussions easier during such an emotive time. The conversations include how and where the person wants to be treated and planning for anticipatory medications. These conversations set everyone on the same agreed path – the clients, the family, and the carers whilst taking cultural requirements into consideration.

Not everyone needs specialist Palliative care, our clinicians are trained to recognise and understand the stages. Each State and Territory have their own palliative care peak body team and our team can help with those contacts.

Our Empower Values closely align the values in palliative care, and they are part of everything our team do every day to improve the comfort care of our clients through all stages of life and death.

For more information and advice speak to one of our Empower clinicians or call PCAS directly: Home Page – Palliative Care Advice Service (pcas.org.au)