Safer Care Victoria has launched two new clinical guidelines to help improve care for Victorians who are nearing the end of their life.
Anticipatory medicines
Victorians tell us that they prefer to be cared for at home in the days before they die, rather than in a hospital or hospice.
To support their choice, our new anticipatory medicines guidance will help you support family, friends and carers administer medications that help ease symptoms such as pain, nausea and breathlessness.
Useful for anyone who provides palliative care for adults in in patient and community settings, the guidance will help you support patients who:
- have someone to care for them, or healthcare professionals who can administer some medications in the home
- do not have any contraindications as listed in the guidance.
The guidance will also help you work with other health professionals, such as GPs and paramedics, as well as the family, friends or carer of the patient.
Palliative sedation therapy
People at the end of their life sometimes experience extreme pain, nausea and breathlessness that is not always possible to manage.
After all other types of medicine or therapies have been tried, palliative sedation may be used to reduce consciousness.
Our palliative sedation therapy guidance helps specialists to support the patient, their family and carer to make decisions about care in the last days of life.
It takes them through the important steps involved in palliative sedation therapy, documentation and medications used.
If you have any questions or feedback about either document, please contact palliativecare.clinicalnetwork@safercare.vic.gov.au