End-of-life essentials: Final report March 2015 to June 2017

This is the Final Report of the National Palliative Care Project - Education Modules on End-of-Life Care in Acute Hospitals 2015-2017 (known as End-of-Life Essentials). This report provides an overview of the activity, followed by the methodology and review of the evaluations of the education modules (Phase 1) and the implementation toolkit (Phase 2).

The End-of-Life Essentials activity is positioned in the Government’s Public Health Chronic Disease and Palliative Care Program. A range of national palliative care projects were supported by the Government to improve the provision of high quality palliative care in Australia by supporting projects primarily focusing on education, training, quality improvement and advance care planning. The Australian Government, under the National Palliative Care Projects initiative, has funded the End-of-Life Essentials activity (Agreement ID: 4-V7YBD5) to enhance the quality of palliative care service delivery and increase support for people who are dying, their families and carers.

The overall goal of the End-of Life Essentials activity was to provide education and an implementation toolkit on end-of-life care to doctors, nurses and allied health professionals who work in acute hospitals across Australia. The intent was to educate health care professionals and provide them with tools and resources to apply the learnings from the modules to their workplace.