Have picked up some great tips from these guys when I have seen them at palliative conferences.
Communication skills are something that you can always improve, even if you have been in the field for a long time!
The site offers videos with examples of communication skills and also cheat sheets of suggestions on how to structure difficult conversations.
Do you find them useful?
I have so many links to share with you. Here are a few of them:
Australian critical care doctor and blogger Andy W writes about death and taxes and asks, “…why is it that we seem to spend so much time talking about the taxes, and not nearly enough about death?” Thought-provoking stuff. “The Things That Are Certain“, The Flying PhD
“Death isn’t failure. But avoiding these conversations is.” UK Palliative Care Physician Katherine Sleeman shares her story in this beautiful piece, “While medicine gets better, dying gets worse: Doctors are so good at saving lives that we forget about death.” (The Independent UK) Continue reading
The team at GeriPal started the Thickened Liquid Challenge to raise awareness of the use of thickened liquids (or thickened fluids, as I know them) for people with swallowing difficulties. Thickened fluids are frequently prescribed to people with swallowing difficulties, but the evidence for their long-term benefit is unconvincing, as GeriPal’s Dr Eric Widera explains. In addition, they are unpleasant (as you will see from the videos!) and may result in reduced fluid intake and dehydration. You can read more about it (and watch many videos of the challenge) at GeriPal. Continue reading
Palliative Care Australia is hosting a number of FREE trivia nights across Australia during National Palliative Care Week, to raise community awareness of palliative care. Trivia nights will be held on Friday 29th May, 2015, In Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Tickets can be booked for no cost via the Palliative Care Australia website. Prizes are available.
Please consider attending, inviting friends and sharing via social media. Of course, attendees do not need to be affiliated with palliative care – in fact, if they have no knowledge of palliative care, all the better to raise awareness.
Palliverse team members will be at the Melbourne and Perth (and maybe other) trivia nights and we hope to see you there.
Has anyone tried Periscope, the new live-streaming video app from Twitter? I used it earlier this week to watch an interview via health journalist (and all round social media star @croakeyblog) Melissa Sweet’s Periscope account. I’m unsure of the potential of this new app at the moment (it could be a great medium for the #thickenedliquidchallenge) but will try it out this weekend when I’m in Melbourne for the Medicine Social health and social media event. (Palliverse’s own Sonia Fullerton is one of the speakers.) You can watch live or on replay for 24 hours after the event.
If you’d like to play along, you can download the app here and follow @palliverse (and @Elissa_Campbell while you’re at it). I think it’s only for iOS at this stage – sorry Android users.
Here is a collection of posters from the recent Asia Pacific Hospice Conference in Taipei – primarily by researchers and clinicians from Australia and New Zealand. Enjoy!
Over 1300 delegates from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond congregated in the Taipei International Conference Centre at the beginning of May for the 11th Asia Pacific Hospice Conference (APHC). With a theme of “Transforming Palliative Care”, there was a particular focus on public health and the development of palliative care in countries where it is not yet well established. It was wonderful to meet clinicians, policymakers, teachers and researchers from near and far – from China to the Philippines, Mongolia to Saudi Arabia, Argentina and the United Kingdom – and discuss shared problems and discover new ways of doing things!
Only for a week! But let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.
This link allows you to sign up for free access to Palliative Medicine till 13th May.
Regards, sonia
The recent senate inquiry into “Availability of new innovative and specialist cancer drugs in Australia” brought timely attention to our Australia’s approach to access and funding of cancer medications. Perhaps unsurprisingly the matter of access to medications for palliative care was not seen as the chief focus of this review, but on closer attention perhaps it received more discussion than was realised.
By Photo taken byAney CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
palliverse.com 