The Advance Project® toolkit that aims to boost the number of aged care residents with dementia benefitting from palliative care and end-of-life support has been accessed by a huge range of care workers, allied health staff, nurses and GPs.

Data collected by The Advance Project® shows 993 people in the aged and primary care sector across Australia have registered to access or been granted access to the free resources, launched last August.

The resources, developed by HammondCare with funding from the Australian government, are designed help frontline aged care staff across Australia initiate courageous conversations about end of life and undertake earlier assessments of palliative care needs.

The successful take-up comes as the Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) announce a $200,000 grant for two HammondCare residential aged care sites, to implement and then formally evaluate the resources to further improve them.

The Advance Project® online toolkit empowers frontline staff for end-of-life conversations

“The findings will inform ongoing quality improvement of the new resources, training and organisation-wide processes for providing advance care planning and palliative care for people living with dementia in residential aged care,” ARIIA announced.

The Advance Project® resources were produced by a team of HammondCare clinicians and researchers led by Professor Josephine Clayton and Jon San Martin with input and feedback from a national expert advisory group, people living with dementia and their families, and other stakeholders.

HammondCare General Manager Health & Palliative Care Dr Andrew Montague said the ARIIA grant would help further fine tune what are excellent resources that can benefit all aged care workers and the people living with dementia who they care for.

“These resources, specifically designed to support our residential and community aged care professionals, can help deliver palliative care to those most in need and relieve needless suffering,” Dr Montague said.