Palliative Care Within the Primary Health Care Setting in Australia: A Scoping Review

Abstract

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Objectives: This scoping review identifies and details the scope of practice of health professionals who provide palliative care within the primary health setting in Australia.Methods: A scoping review approach was conducted on the Cinahl (Ebsco), Scopus, Medline (Ovid) and PubMed databases to extract articles from 1 December 2015 to 1 December 2020. Broad text words and MeSH headings were used with relevance to palliative care, general practice, primary health, and community setting. Extracted journal articles were limited to those based on the Australian population or Australian health system.Results: Eighty-four papers met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The review identified the following health professional roles within the Primary Health Care setting undertaking palliative care: General Practitioner, Nurse, Pharmacist, Paramedics, Carers, and Allied Health professionals.Conclusion: This review offers a first understanding of the individual health professional roles and multidisciplinary team approach to actively providing palliative care within the Primary Health Care setting in Australia.

Keywords

• public health
• workforce
• palliative care
• primary healthcare
• general practitioners