Karen Glaetzer
Flinders University, Australia
Title: PARAMEDICS AND PALLIATIVE CARE – AN UNLIKELY ALLIANCE
Biography
Biography: Karen Glaetzer
Abstract
Delivering care to patients in the environment of their choice is a goal of good palliative care, while this is relatively easy with good planning, the unplanned emergency response requires providers to be creative and think laterally. Traditionally, palliative care services throughout the world have provided their own after-hours services with on-call staff providing home visits when required. For smaller jurisdictions, this is very expensive and resource intensive with a high burden on staff who work business hours as well as providing after-hours support to their clients. Extended care paramedics (ECPs) are senior clinicians with extensive experience charged with the task of managing appropriate patients in the community. This is a 24 hour service, funded by the State Government, with staff employed to be on duty, rather than a callback system which has been the traditional model for palliative care after-hours service delivery. Historically, palliative care services have educated carers not to call an ambulance when a patient is dying. This stance was taken because the patient may be subjected to resuscitation attempts or possible transport to an emergency department. The results of a formal evaluation will be presented which demonstrates that such a model is not only possible but also an effective economic strategy meeting the needs of this particular group of patients