Palliative Care Useful Links
Palliative Care for Children South Africa
To ensure the right of every child to access quality palliative care in South Africa.
To mobilise and support a sustainable network of individuals, organisations, professionals and caregivers to provide palliative care for children and their families from diagnosis to bereavement as an essential component of Universal Health Coverage.
The African Palliative Care Association
We are a pan-African organisation ensuring that palliative care is widely understood, integrated into health systems at all levels and underpinned by evidence in order to reduce pain and suffering across Africa
The Association of Palliative Care Centres
To promote quality in life, dignity in death and support in bereavement for all living with a life-threatening illness by supporting members and partner organisations.
Guide to the Treatment of Cancer Pain in South Africa
Download the Guide to the Treatment of Cancer Pain in South Africa; 2015
SA Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICTTM-SA)
The South African National Policy Framework and Strategy on Palliative Care (NPFSP) recommends that when integrating palliative care into the health system, a palliative care indicators tool should be used to guide doctors and other clinicians to recognise those patients who should receive palliative care.
Although there are international tools that may assist in identifying patients who require palliative care, these tools do not always capture the disease profile of the South African context.
A stepwise Delphi process was conducted to develop a local tool, SPICTTM-SA. In the stepwise approach an expert advisory group felt that it was essential to state clearly, especially for developing countries, that ‘this tool is for deteriorating patients with an advanced life-limiting illness where all available and appropriate management for underlying illnesses and reversible complications has been offered’. The expert advisory group also felt that disease specific indicators should be described before the general indicators in the South African indicators tool, so that all users of the tool orientate themselves to the disease categories first. This was done to ensure patients are assessed and managed according to best curative care guidelines.
This study included 3 new domains to address the South African context: trauma, infectious diseases, and haematological disease.
General indicators for palliative care aligned with the original SPICT tool and were unchanged. The next step is to validate this tool in the clinical context.
For any questions or comments on this tool, please contact info@palprac.org.
Supportive & Palliative Care Indicators Tool
The SPICT is used to help us identify people at risk of deteriorating health due to one or more advanced conditions for holistic, palliative care needs assessment and care planning.
Syringe drivers
Syringe drivers are useful in administering medications subcutaneously continuously over a specific time period. In palliative care this is often used in settings where patients are not able to take in medications orally such as bowel obstruction.
Watch this video on the T34 Ambulatory Syringe pump, a BD offering.