format: Education Portfolio
Pain management is an issue that can be selected, please ensure that you break it down throughout your discussion as there are:
• Different types of pain
• Pain issues specific to particular illness trajectories
• Pain management
• Issues with managing pain
• Pain assessment
• How does management of pain uphold the national palliative care standards?
You could select one of these and cover it in detail or use each of the above as a heading on a slide or within the booklet and break it down with evidence based practice that you use to provide information and education to others on the issue. Readers should be able to identified the objectives of this research on the topic pain management. For example :
• Recognise the importance of mouth care as a component of patient assessment across the lifespan
• Awareness of the outcomes and complications of poor mouth – care on quality of life for the patient
• Deliver high quality patient assessment across the lifespan of the oral mucosa and teeth
• Uphold Cultural safety when caring for a patient at the end of life
• Educate the patient and their family on the importance of mouth-care in a culturally safe and respectful manner
• Be aware of best practice standards for mouth care and uphold them in your clinical care
• Able to provide education to ensure high quality standards and best practice for mouth care are upheld
• Application of mouth care theory to practice in upholding National Palliative Care Standards within care planning and delivery of care
There are certain aspects of pain management that can be explored, either pharmacological, spiritual, psychological or emotional.
Or you could explore pain management and the end of life for a particular disease or illness process.
This issue can be viewed at in a broad sense or in a more specific way dependent upon how you choose to research and present it. Ensure that your work explores the importance of upholding palliative care standards.
Chosen objectives should align well with the palliative care standards, you should link each of these to the specific standards
https://palliativecare.org.au/standards
https://palliativecare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2018/02/PalliativeCare-National-Standards-2018_web-3.pdf
Students are required to demonstrate their understanding of the Palliative Care approach to healthcare delivery and the promotion of best practice in the clinical area. Each student will develop a professional development resource to educate peers about an important Palliative Care issue, supported by National Palliative Care Standards. The intended audience for this resource is 3rd year undergraduate students or graduate nurses.
points will form your headings throughout the booklet/PowerPoint supported with EBP and linked to the national palliative care standards.
Academic references must be used to support the discussion. Avoid using consumer resources. The use of consumer resources significantly impacts on the quality of support for the discussion, and significantly reduces the ability to score marks for content sections requiring literature support
1. Booklet presentation will be in landscape format with evidence-based content being presented in two columns. So that the Booklet can be folded in half if printed and compiled as a booklet. 2. Diagrams used within the booklet are to be professional, linked to the content and referenced appropriately. 3. Headings can be used throughout the booklet to guide the structure and information presented. 4. The content for the booklet is to provide a series of focussed points highlighting aspects of the identified topic. 5. Intext referencing is to be used to support the provided information A.P.A. 6th ed or 7th ed will be accepted. Styling for all in-text references and reference list
Standard 1 – Assessment of needs = Full head to toe assessment will alert you to any issues within the oral mucosa thus with critical thinking and application of theory to practice this leads you to …
Standard 2 – Developing the care plan = An identification of needs: Is the mucosa broken down? Why? Is the patient immunocompromised from chemotherapy etc? Are tehy no longer drinking and thus heavily mouth breathing and drying the mouth hence what would you write on the care plan to ensure 24/7 care for this patient? Hint check out the some EBP on mouth care or the related CPG
Standard 4 Providing Care = Now that you have created a care plan you must instigate the care, what procedure /technique will you use, does the patient cope with this? Is it working and easing discomfort? If not what else might you do?
Standard 7 Service Culture = Is your intervention culturally safe? Are you respecting the wants, and cultural / religious knowings of the family and patient? Explain to the family what you are doing and that it will assist with management of pain. You could possibly put in some examples of things you might say?
Standard 8 quality Improvement = Is this improving the quality of care in your workforce? In your department, how can you ensure that you are of a national standard on your ward …. leading you to
Standard 9 Staff qualifications and training = Ensure that staff are up to date with all current EBP and CPG’s are being maintained and that educaiton sessions for professional development like the booklet that you could create for your ward / hospice / would assist and provide an environment that promotes education.
The nine under-served population groups identified by the Australian Health Care Associates in February 2018 highlighted barriers that they had in accessing appropriate and quality palliative care (Department of Health, 2020):
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
• People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds
• Care Leavers and People Affected by Adoption
• People with Disabilities
• People experiencing Homelessness
• People who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Intersex
• People who are incarcerated
• Refugees
• Veterans
Any of these topics could be selected for example:
Importance of cultural safety and awareness of diversity in the palliative care setting
Importance of interpreters in the delivery of palliative care in a diverse culture
Providing cultural choices and supporting unique aspects of each individual in palliative care
You could be specific and select any religion, any culture, any age group and discuss in relation to palliative care.
Important aspects of care for children in palliative care
Culture and religious considerations in Palliative care
Buddhist end of life practices
Catholic End of life practices
Jewish End of life practices
Spirituality, Religion and palliative care
Managing Nausea and Vomiting and the end of life
Providing Palliative care for the Dementia Patient
Supporting and caring for patients and the end of their life with mental health issues
Identifying Barriers to Palliative Care
Exploratory Analysis of Barriers to Palliative Care
The nine under-served population groups identified by the Australian Health Care Associates in February 2018 highlighted barriers that they had in accessing appropriate and quality palliative care (Department of Health, 2020):
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
• People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds
• Care Leavers and People Affected by Adoption
• People with Disabilities
• People experiencing Homelessness
• People who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Intersex
• People who are incarcerated
• Refugees
• Veterans
Palliative care as previously highlighted in this module should be:
• Accessible to all people with an active, progressive, advanced disease regardless of diagnosis
• Should be strongly responsive to the needs and preferences and values of people, their families and carers
• Affirms life while recognising that dying is an inevitable part of life
(Department of Health, 2020)
What are the Barriers ?
1. Increasing Comfort with discussing death and Dying : While there may be a general culture of ‘death denial’ in mainstream Australian culture, for some under-served populations, a reluctance to talk about death and dying represents an even stronger barrier to accessing palliative care, and having specific needs met when it is accessed.
2. Community Awareness and Understanding Palliative care :
In general, and across all the identified under-served population groups, a lack of understanding of what palliative care is, how it could help, which health and social care providers are involved and what services are available was reported.
3. Timely Initiative of Palliative care : Palliative care is poorly understood by the community—even among professionals who don’t work in the area. Curative treatment and palliative care for symptom control can be mutually exclusive, it does not have to be one or the other
4. Understanding under-served populations : It is not feasible to expect all health care workers to have a full comprehensive understanding of all areas of our diverse community and its populations, however they must be recognised and as such referrals made and knowing where to get help is an essential role of any health and social care worker
5. Awareness of Trauma Informed Care: Many individuals have ‘extensive histories of trauma, that when left unaddressed can and often do impact care’. It is the role of all care providers to be able to provide comprehensive person centred care, inclusive of past traumatic experiences that may make death, dying and having unresolved issues and trauma causing physical and emotional pain during the process
6. Information Provision and Communication: Effective, appropriate information sharing is imperative throughout a person’s entire palliative care journey. ‘Palliative care communication is very different to everyday communication. We need to help people find hope, cope with grief, address their spirit, and plan for tomorrow’
7. Provision of Person Centred Care: We need to have a palliative care service that is inclusive for all groups, not a different service for different populations, but to do this we need to identify barriers and facilitators
8. Palliative care in rural and remote settings: The level of services varies dramatically in geographically remote areas. Our metro areas are well covered, our regional less so, and remote is “hit and miss”. All people should be able to have the same access
Bridging the Gap
Recognising barriers is the way forward to repairing and acting on them
(Department of Health, 2020)
Broad Innovative person centred networks that engage communities and health care professionals to have conversations and share experiences is an important way moving forward; we need to share and link our ideas, understanding and referrals to all diverse aspects of health and community networks