The intent of guidelines recommended by the Hume Palliative Care Consortium is to make them available to health services and clinical staff across the Hume Region to promote evidence-based practice in palliative care.
Clinical guidelines are intended to provide general advice to the medical, nursing, and allied health staff working with clients with a life limiting illness. These recommended guidelines are not a substitute to comprehensive assessment and critical thinking relevant to the particular patient’s individual clinical circumstances and degree of symptom burden. There may also be strong clinical evidence for choosing a therapeutic intervention that may be different to what is recommended in these guidelines. Timely consultation and advice from the palliative care service is always recommended, if appropriate, when using these guidelines.
When recommending clinical guidelines, the Hume Palliative Care Consortium ensures the content is accurate and based on evidence. The Hume Palliative Care Consortium takes no responsibility for new clinical evidence or information that may become available or be published following guideline distribution or nominated review date.
Guidelines recommended by Hume Palliative Care Consortium may be used by providers to develop similar protocols and procedures that can be customised according to the organising clinical context and requirements. Health organisations must also ensure that use of these guidelines complement their organisational governance structure including health professional palliative care delivery scope of practice.
