Palliative Aged Care: Collaborative Partnerships Between Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Care

SUMMARYPalliative aged care is rapidly developing as a specialty area, involving the collaboration and combined expertise of the fields of gerontology, geriatric care, and palliative care. The similarities and differences between these fields provide rich ground for complementing and informing each other's practice and perspectives and in working together to develop health and social policy, which acknowledge the unique factors distinguishing the experience of many elderly people with life-limiting illness. In recent years, two significant projects have been initiated in Australia: (1) the Australian Palliative Residential Aged Care Project (APRAC), which developed evidence-based guidelines for palliative aged care; and (2) the joint development of a postgraduate online program in Palliative Care in Aged Care, by the Department of Palliative and Supportive Services and the Centre for Ageing Studies, a WHO Collaborating Centre, both of Flinders University, Adelaide. Both projects have reconciled the paradigms, philosophies, and evidence-based knowledge of both palliative care and aged care to create for the first time a set of guidelines and an educational program, which will inform and influence the development of practice in this important and developing clinical area.