Palliative Care Service

The Palliative Care Service at Royal Perth Hospital commenced in 1990. It has grown every year in staff, patient numbers and services. Initially consultations were confined to seeing patients with a cancer diagnosis. Now a quarter of the patients has non-malignant diseases.

The staff includes 2 consultants, registrar and resident medical officer as well as nurses, clinical pharmacist, social worker, bereavement officer and chaplain.

The Palliative Care Service provides the following services.

• A consultative medical service for in-patients. This requires the approval of the specialist in charge of the patient’s care, and should be in the usual form of a written consultation request. Initial telephone discussion is encouraged. Our usual practice is joint care in conjunction with the referring team. Unfortunately no formal after-hours service is available. There is no actual palliative care ward. The consultative response includes a comprehensive inter-disciplinary assessment to address physical, emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their families.
• An outpatient clinic is available on Monday and Thursday afternoons. This is labelled the "Symptom Assessment Clinic", partly to avoid the negative connotation for some patients of the word "palliative".
• A consultative service by specialist nurses. This is available to any hospital staff, especially other nurses. No formal request is needed. Nursing staff can be contacted by paging or phoning the department directly.
• A bereavement service. We contact the families of all patients who die in RPH while receiving input from the Palliative Care Service. In addition, the Bereavement Officer provides support to the families of all other patients who die in RPH (more than 1000 per year).
• Discharge planning: eg. facilitating discharge to the community with domiciliary support from the Silver Chain Hospice Care Service, or transfer to a hospice or country hospital.
• Education and research.

To contact the Palliative Care Service, please call +61 (8) 9224 2788.