Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Palliative Care Statewide Clinical Network

The Palliative Care Statewide Clinical Network is dedicated to ensuring that all South Australians, along with their families, carers, and loved ones, receive the best possible end of life and palliative care experience.

Page Contents

  • Related news
  • Vision and goals
  • Steering Committee
  • Current projects and collaborations
  • Related information

Related News

Vale Kathryn Hourigan

It is with great sad­ness we share with you that our dear col­league Kathryn Houri­g­an, co-lead for the Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work, died on Fri­day the 21st of Feb­ru­ary, after a very short peri­od of illness.

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Community focused and impact driven - how our Palliative Care Statewide Clinical Network Co-leads have been making a difference in South Australia

A snap­shot of how Peter All­croft and Kathryn Houri­g­an are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in pal­lia­tive care through their ded­i­ca­tion to com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and oth­er initiatives.

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Raising awareness and busting myths about palliative care

The Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work released a series of short videos aimed at increas­ing the com­mu­ni­ties’ aware­ness of pal­lia­tive care.

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Vision and goals

Vision

Con­sumers, their fam­i­lies, and car­ers can access and expe­ri­ence the best pos­si­ble end-of-life and pal­lia­tive care that is focussed on indi­vid­ual needs, wish­es, val­ues and pref­er­ences. This is achieved by active col­lab­o­ra­tion con­nect­ing health net­works, agen­cies, NGOs, con­sumers and research.

Goals

The Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work aims to improve the way con­sumers, their fam­i­lies, and car­ers expe­ri­ence the end of life, death and beyond. We do this by:

  • improv­ing ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and qual­i­ty of last year of life.
  • active­ly engag­ing with the community.
  • enhanc­ing con­sumer voice and expe­ri­ence through PREMs.
  • sup­port­ing work­force sustainability.
  • util­is­ing data insights for actions and deci­sion making.
  • advi­so­ry and input to rel­e­vant stake­hold­er (work­ing) groups.

Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Steer­ing Committee

The Steer­ing Com­mit­tees pro­vide over­sight of the devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion of the net­works’ activ­i­ties.

The Steer­ing Com­mit­tees are con­struct­ed to reflect a bal­ance of expe­ri­ence across met­ro­pol­i­tan and coun­try as well as from with­in and out of hos­pi­tal sec­tors. The Steer­ing Com­mit­tees are led by a Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Lead.

For more infor­ma­tion, refer to Statewide Pal­lia­tive Care Clin­i­cal Net­work Terms of Ref­er­ence (290 KB, PDF)

Dr Peter Allcroft

Palliative Care Statewide Clinical Network Co-Lead

BMBS FRACP M Palliative Care

Dr Peter All­croft is a Senior Staff Spe­cial­ist at South­ern Ade­laide Pal­lia­tive Ser­vices, based at Flinders Med­ical Cen­tre South Aus­tralia. He ini­tial­ly trained in Res­pi­ra­to­ry and Sleep Med­i­cine, com­plet­ed his Mas­ters of Pal­lia­tive Care at Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty, and is cur­rent­ly under­tak­ing a PhD at UTS, explor­ing the unmet pal­lia­tive care needs of frail old­er patients with heart fail­ure. He is active­ly involved with clin­i­cal teach­ing and research pro­grams. He has an inter­est in Mod­els of Pal­lia­tive Care for patients with com­plex chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions. He co-found­ed the Motor Neu­rone Dis­ease Clin­ic which is based at Flinders Med­ical Cen­tre, and is the Deputy Chair of the Motor Neu­rone Dis­ease Asso­ci­a­tion of South Australia.

Palliative Care Statewide Clinical Network Steering Committee

Peter All­croft

Co-Lead, Pal­lia­tive Care Clin­i­cal Care, FMC

Alice Every

Nurs­ing Direc­tor, Aged Care Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Pal­lia­tive Care, North­ern Ade­laide Local Health Network

David Hold­en

Med­ical Head of Unit, North­ern Ade­laide Pal­lia­tive Ser­vice, North­ern Ade­laide Local Health Network

Eliz­a­beth Fallas

Nurse Prac­ti­tion­er Pal­lia­tive Care, Coun­try Spe­cial­ist Pal­lia­tive Care Services

Helen Stone

State and Ter­ri­to­ry Man­ag­er SA/NT, Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Soci­ety of Australia
Jes­si­ca SmithPhys­io­ther­a­pist, Pul­monary Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Pal­lia­tive Care, South­ern Ade­laide Local Health Network

Kate Sweten­ham

Clin­i­cal Lead End of Life Care Team, Depart­ment for Health and Wellbeing

Les­ley King

Senior Ser­vices and Sec­tor Capac­i­ty Offi­cer, Aged and Com­mu­ni­ty Care Providers Association

Lin­da Foreman

Pal­lia­tive Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist and Con­sul­tant Ade­laide Pal­lia­tive Care, Cen­tral Ade­laide Pal­lia­tive Care Service

Mark Har­ris

Consumer/​Car­er Representative

Mary Cos­sich

Med­ical Head of Unit, SA Pae­di­atric Pal­lia­tive Care Ser­vice, Wom­ens and Chil­drens Hospital
Michaela DempseyClin­i­cal Senior Occu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­pist, Flinders Upper North Local Health Network

Rebec­ca May

RN, Neona­tal Inten­sive Care, Wom­ens and Chil­drens Hospital

Shy­la Mills

CEO Pal­lia­tive Care SA

Sonia Schutz

Rur­al Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er, Pal­lia­tive Care 

Sun­ny Traverse

Direc­tor Res­i­den­tial Aged Care, Bene Aged Care
Susan HaynesPal­lia­tive Med­i­cine Consultant

Tim To

Head of Unit, Geri­atric and Pal­lia­tive Med­i­cine, South­ern Ade­laide Local Health Network

Tra­cy Johnstone

Consumer/​Car­er Representative 
Stephen WalesCom­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Con­sul­tant, Car­ers SA

Current projects and collaborations

Statewide Patient Report­ed Expe­ri­ence Mea­sure (PREM)

The Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work has part­nered with the CEIH to devel­op a Pal­lia­tive Care PREM for South Aus­tralia. This ini­tia­tive will give patients the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide feed­back about their health expe­ri­ences and out­comes, to dri­ve improve­ments in care and health­care outcomes.

This valu­able feed­back will help dri­ve improve­ments across Pal­lia­tive Care ser­vices in South Australia.


Pre­vi­ous projects and collaborations

Palliative Care Strategic Framework 2022-2027

The Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work part­nered with the Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing (DHW), to devel­op the Strate­gic Frame­work for Pal­lia­tive Care in South Australia.

The Frame­work, deliv­ered in Decem­ber 2021, was devel­oped to guide and pri­ori­tise improve­ments in the qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of pal­lia­tive care ser­vices for all South Australians.

Read more about South Australia’s Pal­lia­tive Care Strate­gic Frame­work 2022 – 2027 on the SA Health web­site.

Relat­ed information

Additional resources

Have a question?

If you’d like to find out more about the Pal­lia­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work email us at CEIHPalliativeCare@​sa.​gov.​au.