VPCNPC at EAPC Conference

Victorian Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner presented at the European Association of Palliative Care conference 

The Centre for Palliative Care collaborated with the clinical staff at St Vincent’s, Melbourne to perform the study which aimed to test the feasibility and utility of nurse-led implementation of the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT) to identifying patients who may benefit from palliative care assessment.

Hospital-based palliative care consult services (PCCS) generally receive high referral rates from medical units. Many of these patients, however, are referred too late to benefit from symptom management and psychosocial support that palliative care can provide when integrated with appropriate treatment for their underlying illness.

Instead patients are often in their final admission, or indeed days of life, limiting the benefit of palliative care interventions.

One of the findings was that 90% of General Medicine patients met the criteria for the SPICT tool. 50% of that cohort had died after one year.

On behalf of the Victorian Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner Collaborative (VPCNPC) we would like to congratulate Tom on his presentation.

 Picture taken by Dr Kathryn DuCharlet