Welcome

The North and West Metropolitan Region Palliative Care Consortium (the Consortium) is an alliance of nine palliative care providers located throughout the North and West Metropolitan region of Melbourne.  The providers include Austin Health, Banksia Palliative Care, Melbourne Citymission, Mercy Palliative Care, Northern Health, Royal District Nursing Service, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Werribee Mercy Hospital and Western Health.  They work in the community (caring for people in their homes), in acute settings (caring for people who are in a hospital) and inpatient settings (providing care in a hospice or palliative care unit).

The Consortium is one of eight palliative care consortia established in 2004 by the Department of Health Victoria.  The role of the palliative care consortia is to :

  • undertake regional planning in line with department directions
  • coordinate palliative care service provision in each region
  • advise the department about regional priorities for future services development and funding
  • in conjunction with the Palliative Care Clinical Network (PCCN)
    • implement the service delivery framework
    • undertake communication, capacity building and clinical service improvement initiatives

(Strengthening palliative care: Policy and strategic directions 2011-2015)

What is Palliative Care?

"Palliative Care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threating illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment  and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual."

Palliative care:

  • provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
  • affirms life and regards dying as a normal process
  • intends neither to hasten or postpone death
  • integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
  • offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
  • offers a support system to help the family cope during the patient's illness and in their own bereavement
  • uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated
  • will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness
  • is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications (WHO 2010).