“Dying is an art, like everything else.” So said Sylvia Plath in her poem, Lady Lazarus. And like any art, it is often hard to fathom what works best: and with dying we only get one chance to get it ...
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Palliative care nurse blazing a trail to awards
The inaugural Health Minister’s award for nursing trailblazers has been awarded to a Canberra nurse for her work in improving the delivery of palliative care to Australians living in residential aged care. Nikki Johnston, a palliative care nurse practitioner based ...
More »A carer’s journey: advice for my former self
It was just another shift working as a physiotherapist in a Melbourne emergency department. Hospitals, healthcare and aged care were all second nature to me, until I received a phone call that changed it all. It was my aunty on ...
More »Bridging the gap: the emergence of the death doula
“I was in a palliative care ward here in Sydney, and there were two nurses on a ward of 16 people who had four people actively dying, one of which was our person. Our person was really scared of being ...
More »Palliative care reimagined: the compassionate communities model
It has been suggested that the western world has lost its ‘death literacy’ as we increasingly look to outsource end of life care to businesses. A new public health approach to palliative care has been put forward as a compassionate alternative ...
More »A dying wish: Lobster for Josino
What would be your last meal? For Josino, all he wanted was lobster, but that wasn’t to be. “You know what really annoys me, if I was on death row, I could choose my last meal. Just because I’m sick, ...
More »Dying2Learn about dying
A free online resource is helping improve conversations about the subject of dying and reducing social stigma. Developed by a team of palliative care experts at Flinders University, Dying2Learn was developed as part of the Australian Department of Health CareSearch ...
More »Palliative care standards updated
Palliative Care Australia has launched the fifth edition of the National Palliative Care Standards and the Palliative Care Service Development Guidelines, in an effort to better shape how palliative care is planned, funded and delivered across Australia in the next ...
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