On Tuesday 15 July and Friday 25 June COTA Queensland, Health Consumers Queensland and the Queensland Clinical Senate held two community forums facilitated by ABC National’s Dr Norman Swan. Consumers, carers, doctors, nurses, social workers, hospital managers and board members, mental health, aged care and disability workers and academics explored how do we, as a society, ensure we and our loved ones receive appropriate end-of-life health care that will provide us with the best quality of life? Key issues explored included the importance of shared decision making to avoid futile medical treatments, end of life planning and access to palliative care services.
The forums and issues were covered by ABC TV’s 7.30 Queensland program, watch the story here.
The following recommendations to better enable informed end-of-life decision making and care were generated by attendees and will be sent to the Queensland Health Minister for consideration.
- Development of an end-of-life care charter for display and adoption in all health facilities across Queensland: A draft charter was developed at the forum, and this will be further refined.
- Community engagement and awareness campaign: A campaign focusing on enhancing end-of-life care literacy was identified as critical to enhancing community understanding.
- Clinician and student clinician education and training: The forum highlighted the need for clinicians across the health spectrum to receive specific education and training about best practice end-of-life conversations and care.
- Develop wholly integrated models of care for end-of-life: The need for improved integration of care services between the primary and acute care sectors was identified as an area of priority attention to be addressed in facilitating optimal care at end-of-life.
