Making the most of the moment.

One of the hardest jobs in life is caring for someone who is dying. It’s a tough job physically and emotionally and it’s not helped that so many people want to avoid the conversation about death and what to do for the person dying.

At Flinders University, we have a reputation for looking to make a difference through innovation and this was certainly an area that has been unloved and ignored for too long.

Technology provided an answer to delivering trustworthy palliative care information that can be used by health professionals, aged care workers, and families and friends. Technology also means the information is there when it is needed regardless of where you live and work.

PalliAGED is an evidence and practice website for the health and aged care workforce developed by the team at Flinders University headed by Professor Jennifer Tieman, Dean (Research). It provides people working in community and residential aged care with information about a palliative approach framework that includes advance care planning, case conferencing and terminal care planning.

There is also information that helps families understand how things change as an older person moves towards death and highlights different types of relevant care.

It’s not something hard to access; in fact, it’s available on the web. And there are two palliAGED apps that mean you can carry all this evidence in your pocket.

CareSearch is the go-to place for evidence and resources for all palliative care issues. It is designed for anyone and everyone who needs palliative care information. It has resources for patients, carers, families and friends. There are specific sections for GPs, for nurses, for allied health staff and it houses information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander care.

Lead researcher Jennifer Tieman said online resources were the next step in ensuring more people received the highest level of care possible.

“At some stage we will all die and people should have information at hand about end-of-life and palliative care,” she said.

“These resources complement and support the hands on care being provided by a person’s health team.”

“Australia has had a very proud history of leading the world in guidance for end-of-life care for older people and now that we are in a new era (of technology) we continue to lead by establishing easily accessible online resources.”

The movement from a hard copy to an online resource also makes it easier to keep the information in the program up to date as new evidence emerges.

Palliative care addresses the physical, psychosocial and emotional suffering of patients with serious advanced illnesses such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, congestive heart failure, neurodegenerative disorders, chronic respiratory diseases and others.

CareSearch and palliAGED are already changing the way care is given to those at the end of their lives and will continue to make more of a difference as more and more carers, health professionals and communities access, download and use the resources.

Online palliative care resources are not the only innovative programme in the health and wellbeing space at Flinders. We are also looking at new ideas in healthy ageing to help people live as long and as fully as possible.

In addition we are looking at our young people and their future careers, most of which have not been imagined as yet. Our role there is not to teach out-dated rules on redundant careers but rather to train young brains to embrace change and innovate their own futures.

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