Description Palliative and End of Life Care focuses on the palliative approach as a model of care, exploring the benefits of this approach when supporting dying individuals with any life limiting illness. Students will acquire the capabilities to develop self-care strategies to manage their own grief, loss and stress associated with working in a palliative care context.
Students must be enrolled in program 4785 - Master of Nursing Practice (Preregistration).
Assumed Knowledge
Well-developed communication and person-centred care skills.
On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:
1. Justify palliative care principles and their application when assessing, planning, and managing the holistic physical, psychological, cultural, social, and spiritual needs of a person experiencing a life limiting condition across the lifespan.
2. Appraise comprehensive person-centred care across a variety of settings utilising the multidisciplinary team to provide coordinated and integrated approach.
3. Deliberate ethical, legal and professional issues when facilitating collaborative and ethical decision making about the provision of palliative nursing care and advanced care planning
4 . Evaluate evidence and apply strategies to support a person and their significant others during palliation including loss and grief support services.
5. Apply strategies to manage a rapidly changing healthcare environment when facilitating collaborative and ethical decision making in the provision of palliative nursing care and advanced care planning.
1. A palliative approach, general and specialist palliative care. Who requires palliative care?
2. Models and Domains of palliative care.
3. Accesses and analyses the best available evidence, that includes research findings, for safe, quality practice
4. Ethical principles of palliative nursing; autonomy, beneficence,
5. Legal aspects of palliative care nursing; Advanced care planning, substitute decision maker (Case Study).
6. Communication – effective communication (paraphrase, validate etc), difficult conversations (communicating to people under stress, communicating with people in pain) and caring for families.
7. Palliative care settings – How setting effect care, expectations & experience of family/patient.
8. Interdisciplinary teams in palliative care
9. Spirituality and culturally diverse practices, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
10. Death, dying and grief responses.
11. Managing pain effectively (pain assessment with people who may have limited communication, & palliative care for children)
12. Symptom Management: Case study
13. Compassion fatigue, burnout, and resilience
Assessment
The following table summarises the standard assessment tasks for this subject. Please note this is a guide only. Assessment tasks are regularly updated, where there is a difference your Learning Guide takes precedence.
