Three tools to help support end-of-life care for aged care residents living with dementia mate wareware 

The Dementia End-of-life project heard about three key challenges for best practice end-of-life care for aged residential care residents with dementia :

  • residents often enter the facility without any prior advanced care planning.
  • coordination amongst services, including primary care, can sometimes be difficult
  • teams sometimes lack confidence in developing and implementing individual end-of-life care plans.

The project identified three existing evidence-based tools that, when used routinely, can help address these challenges and support high-quality, person-centred end-of-life and palliative care for our residents living with dementia. In short, three tools that every team supporting residents in aged residential care should know about!

Thank you for your commitment to meeting the unique end-of-life care needs of people living with dementia. We warmly encourage you to find out more and embed any of the tools you are not already using regularly. 

Talk. Shared goals of care conversations

  • When: as early as possible in the disease progression
  • What: early discussion around care planning
  • How: The diagnosis of dementia activates a partnership throughout the person's time in the facility.  It supports the resident and family/whānau to express what is important to them and their preferred achievable goals for care, before times of crisis.  It can help us to understand, document, and respect what is important to them.

 

Teamwork. Multi-service multidisciplinary team meetings

  • When: Periods of instability in the disease progression
  • What: Collaborating and communicating across services
  • How: Multi-service planning is activated in response to unstable or complex changes.  All relevant teams review the case to facilitate an integrated, holistic approach to the resident's care. This coordinated collaborative approach can efficiently enable access to consultation and expert advice across services so that complex issues are considered jointly. 

 

  

Te Ara Whakapiri: 

  • When: the last days of life
  • What: An individual plan of care that address physical, mental, social, cultural and spiritual issues
  • How: Te Ara Whakapiri is activated when a person is identified as actively dying. Te Ara Whakapiri provides a structure to build an individualised care plan and offers tools and resources for best-practice end-of-life care. It can help us ensure good quality end-of-life care and a dignified death that respects what is important to the person and their family/whānau. It includes supporting the family/whanau during and after the death. 

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