Communicating with and caring for people with a life-limiting condition can be confronting and stressful, particularly as it forces people to face their own mortality and personal experiences of death and loss.
There are often heavy workloads, with a lack of staffing adding to the burden of care. Higher levels of burnout are reported by the health professionals providing palliative and end-of-life care.
Palliative care information provider CareSearch highlights the need for practitioners to practice self-care and encourages individuals and teams to care for their own mental and physical health and achieve a work, life balance.
CareSearch has now released printable versions of the reference guides to help GPs navigate CareSearch resources. You can either download or order for free from CareSearch.
The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) recently launched a new Palliative Care Online Training module, ‘Practicing self-care’. The module is offered in two streams; the first stream is tailored for health professionals and the second stream is tailored to informal carers and families.
Practising self-care course information
Palliative Care Online Training is a national palliative care project funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health. It offers free non-clinical online training for carers, community and aged care workers, students, volunteers, family members and clinicians who want to build their skills in caring for someone with a life-limiting illness.
Additional resources
Check out The Centre for Palliative Care education events for 2023 and Caring@Home Palliative Care Clinic Box, which has been launched to empower the provision of palliative care at home for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.