Palliative Care Resources

A Palliative Approach to Care in the Last 12 Months of Life is a best practice guideline (BPG) which provides evidence-based recommendations to nurses and the interprofessional health team who support adults (18 years and older) experiencing the last 12 months of a progressive life-limiting illness, their families and their caregivers.

The goals of the recommendations are to:

• (a) improve delivery of psychosocial, spiritual and culturally safe care;
• (b) enhance coordination of care; and
• (c) facilitate supportive work environments.

This BPG is applicable to all practice settings where persons and families require palliative care and end-of-life care services (e.g., acute care, community care, and long-term care). It has 11 evidence-based recommendations and addresses the following areas: the domains of psychosocial, spiritual and culturally safe care; interprofessional care planning and delivery; and strategies to support health providers who provide palliative care and end-of-life care.

For more information, please visit: https://rnao.ca/bpg/guidelines/palliative-approach-care-last-12-months-life

Hospice palliative care nursing competencies developed in Canada to date have been primarily adult focused. The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) and the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Nurses Group developed nursing competencies that form the basis of the national certification exam for Hospice Palliative Care Nursing. While these valuable competencies can apply to many aspects of pediatrics, components specific to the pediatric field are missing.

To facilitate nationally consistent education and ongoing development of nurses entering the growing field of pediatric palliative care (PPC), a core group of thirteen nurses, including PCNIG's Sandra Ross, representing seven of the nineteen specialized PPC programs in Canada came together to develop PPC Nursing Competencies.

The competencies can be accessed online here or downloaded from below.

This document establishes a minimum national standard for palliative care in Canada, and it seeks to direct consistent implementation and measurement of palliative care competencies in practice. It serves as a guiding document for jurisdictions that lack an explicit set of palliative care competencies, and also as high-level guidance for provinces that have built their own competency frameworks.

How to use the framework

The competency framework has been written with several readers in mind:

• Individuals, managers, and human resources personnel will use it to fill skills gaps and guide hiring practices.
• Educators will use it to identify minimum standards for palliative care competencies, weave the development of essential skills into existing curricula, or build new curricula to teach the competencies.
• National accreditation and regulatory agencies will use it as a guide for establishing minimum national standards in palliative care.

For more information and the most up-to-date version of The Canadian Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Competency Framework, visit the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer website.

This reference guide for health professionals and volunteers describes the knowledge, personal attributes and skills providers need to deliver high-quality palliative care in Ontario. Applying these competencies in practice will lead to better care for people with a life-limiting condition, and encourage collaboration among professionals and organizations providing palliative care.

This framework is a deliverable from the Ontario Palliative Care Network Action Plan, as part of building provider competencies in hospice palliative care. It complements Health Quality Ontario’s quality standard, Palliative Care: Care for Adults with a Progressive, Life-Limiting Illness; and the OPCN’s Health Services Delivery Framework recommendations.

Highlights:

• Includes key professions commonly involved in palliative care delivery in Ontario
• Describes profession-specific and shared competencies
• Organizes competencies into 13 domains essential to palliative care practice
• Includes competencies for those caring for patient or family with life-limiting conditions, plus additional ones for those specializing in palliative care
• Incorporates competencies specific to caring for First Nations, Inuit, Métis and urban Indigenous peoples
• Validated by health professional colleges and associations
• Adapted from the Nova Scotia Competency Framework, and Ireland’s Palliative Care Competence Framework

For more information, please visit: https://www.ontariopalliativecarenetwork.ca/en/competencyframework

This quality standard addresses palliative care for people who are living with a serious, life-limiting illness, and for their family and caregivers. The goal of palliative care is to relieve pain and suffering, and to improve a person’s quality of life. This quality standard focuses on care for people in all settings, including home and community, hospice, hospital, and long-term care.

For more information, please visit: https://www.hqontario.ca/evidence-to-improve-care/quality-standards/view-all-quality-standards/palliative-care

The Serious Illness Conversation Guide (2015) by Ariadne Labs was developed to assist healthcare professionals in guiding conversation flow in patient-tested language through the six phases:

1. Set Up
2. Assess
3. Share
4. Explore
5. Close
6. Document

The guide can be accessed online here or downloaded below.

Palliative Care Organizations

• Hospice-Palliative Care Ontario (HPCO): https://www.hpco.ca
• Canadian Palliative Care Nursing Association (CPCNA): https://www.cpcna.ca
• Canadian Virtual Hospice (CVH): https://www.virtualhospice.ca
• Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association (CHPCA): https://www.chpca.ca
• Speak Up Canada: https://www.advancecareplanning.ca
• Canadian Grief Alliance: http://www.canadiangriefalliance.ca
• American Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA): https://advancingexpertcare.org
• American Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC): https://www.capc.org
• Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA): https://www.thewhpca.org