Palliative Care Needs Rounds
Helping people to live better and die well in their preferred place of death.
Welcome to Palliative Care Needs Rounds (Needs Rounds), a unique way of improving palliative care for people living in residential care facilities for older people.
Suite of free resources
Find out how to use Needs Rounds to generate the positive benefits for residents and staff demonstrated in our research.
- How to conduct Needs Rounds
- How to engage with stakeholders
- 5 x video resources
Watch the preview (3 min)
The Needs Rounds approach aims to help people to live better and die well in their preferred place of death. It comprises three core elements:
Needs Rounds are monthly hour-long triage meetings to discuss residents who are at risk of dying without a plan in place. Needs Rounds are chaired by a specialist palliative care clinician and use a structured approach and checklist to guide discussions and outcomes. The specialist palliative care clinician works with staff to identify risks relating to illness trajectories, plan for end of life care and to manage symptoms and medications. Case based education helps staff to recognise and plan for dying and increases their capacity to care for people in their last months of life.
Multidisciplinary case conferences with general practitioners, residents, families and aged care staff. Goals of care are discussed and advance care plans completed, and anticipatory prescribing improves access to medications for end of life care. Case conferences help to increase the capacity of the community to recognise and normalise dying.
Palliative Care Needs Rounds have been tested in a clinical trial funded by Australian Capital Territory Department of Health and run by staff at the Australian Catholic University, Calvary Health Care and University of Stirling. The trial results have been published in Palliative Medicine and the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The research team have developed a suite of implementation resources to help you to begin using Palliative Care Needs Rounds in your area. These include a ‘how-to’ guide to conducting Needs Rounds and engaging with stakeholders, and mirror the implementation of Needs Rounds in the original pilot study and the trial.
Access all the resources
Provide your details below for free access to access the Palliative Care needs rounds documentary and resources.
Providing your details helps us monitor/track who is using the resources. Once you have registered you will be able to able to watch the videos and download the manual, and we can contact you with any updates or further information.