Palliative Care and End of Life Care for Aged Persons within a Residential MultiPurpose Centre: A cr

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Palliative Care and End of Life Care for Aged
Persons within a Residential Multi-Purpose
Centre A critical ethnographic study.Sonia
Allen (Supervisor Professor K. Francis
Co-supervisor Professor M. OConnorMonash
University, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and
Health Sciences, School of Nursing Midwifery.
Gippsland Campus.
Introduction The federal Government accepted
responsibility for institutional care of aged
persons in 1954 with the Aged Persons Act of the
same year. The Home and Community Care Act 1985
(HACC) complimented and alleviated the burden of
financial constraint, by providing a range of
home services enabling supportive care to be
provided within a persons home. In 1993, the
combining of HACC and Federal health resources
resulted in Multi-Purpose Service/Centres being
adopted. The Aged Care Act 1997 introduced
radical changes to residential aged care, however
it was the guidelines for a Palliative Approach
in Residential Aged Care and subsequent
developments within the Palliative Care arena
that have engendered my interest in the delivery
of nursing care to residents within Multi-Purpose
services/Centres.
Aims The aim of this study is to examine how
palliative care is provided to residents residing
within a Multi-Purpose Service/Centre in rural
Victoria.
Methodology. This study employs a critical
ethnographic approach to examine how palliative
care is provided by nurses in a rurally located
multipurpose service. Data Collection
Methods Data collection involved four approaches
namely field notations, non-participatory
observations, focused interviews, the development
of practice scenarios to explicate practice and
provide focus for group and individual nurse
discussion and documentary data. Data
Analysis Thematic analysis of interview data was
undertaken to identify major themes. Content
analysis of field and observation data including
documentation was conducted. All data sets will
be triangulated to develop an in-depth
understanding of palliative care within this
setting and recommendations for enhancing the
delivery of palliative care to residents will be
enunciated to improve rural service.