Palliative Care Week update

Following Palliative Care Week, professor Patsy Yates, president of Palliative Care Australia, explains the role nurses can play.

Throughout our lives, every one of us will experience the loss of someone close, whether a family member, neighbour or friend. At some point, we will also personally face the reality that death is a universal human experience.

For this reason, Palliative Care Australia is making 2013 the year to make palliative care everyone’s business. To ensure that we all have quality care at the end of life, and are able to live and die well, we all need to take responsibility for making this happen.

This is an especially important message for nurses who provide a major component of end-of-life care across a range of care settings.

Nurses provide physical, psychological, social and spiritual support for the person and their family at this most important time of a person’s life. This support is underpinned by a sound evidence base, while also reflecting nursing’s strong commitment to values of compassion and respect.

As nurses, the support we provide is just one part of family, community and multidisciplinary team efforts to ensure the best quality of life for the person who is dying. This is why it is important for us engage with all of these groups in our efforts to achieve quality care.

Palliative Care Australia has a range of consumer information available on its website that can assist with this and we encourage you to make these available in your settings. All resources are free to order from www.palliativecare.org.au

We are also encouraging people to share their personal experiences of palliative care and leave a tribute to a loved one on our My Memories webpage, visit www.mytribute.com.au

Palliative care is important to all of us. Make palliative care your business in 2013.

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