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Pomegranate Health
Pomegranate Health is a podcast about the culture of medicine. You'll hear clinicians, researchers and advocates discuss all aspects of professionalism and quality improvement in healthcare. This includes clinical ethics, diagnostic bias, better communication and more equitable systems. For a sampler of these diverse themes of professional practice take a listen to Episode 132 and Episode 125.
If RACP is your CPD home, you can log time spent listening to each episode with the "Add activity to MyCPD" button. And if you're a Basic Physician Trainee, the [Case Report] series might help you prepare for your long case clinical exams.
This is also the home of [IMJ On-Air], featuring authors from the Internal Medicine Journal sharing their latest research. Meanwhile, the [Journal Club] episodes give RACP members a place to talk through their research published in other academic journals.
Feel free to send feedback and suggestions by email at podcast@racp.edu.au.
Pomegranate Health
[IMJ On-Air] HepatoCare: a model for palliative and supportive care in advanced cirrhosis
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Median survival for patients diagnosed with advanced cirrhosis is around 2 years and quality of life is poor. Fewer than a quarter of such patients receive referrals to palliative care and advanced care plans are also rare. Existing research from abroad suggests that hepatology staff aren’t familiar with referral criteria and assume that palliative services become involved only at the very end of life.
To try and reduce barriers to referral, clinicians at Royal Brisbane Hospital developed a model called Hepatocare. They adapted a palliative care referral algorithm to include cirrhosis specific markers and continuity of care between the teams was provided by a clinical nurse consultant. The model was piloted model in 30 consecutive patients to the liver clinic, and its impact was assessed on rate of referrals, incidence of unplanned admissions, length of patient stay and rates of polypharmacy.
Guests
Professor James O’Beirne FRCP FRACP (Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service; University of the Sunshine Coast)
Dr Richard Skoien MBBS FRACP (Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; University of Queensland)
Dr Alison Kearney FRACP MRCP (Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; University of Queensland)
Olivia Cullen (Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital)
Key Reference
- Alison Kearney, Neha Tiwari, Olivia Cullen, Amy Legg, Ismail Arbi, Carol Douglas, Barbara Leggett, Mary Fenech, Joanne Mina, Paris Hoey, Richard Skoien. Improving palliative and supportive care in advanced cirrhosis: the HepatoCare model of integrated collaborative care. Intern Medicine Journal. 2023 Nov;53(11):1963-1971
Production
Produced by Mic Cavazzini DPhil. Music licenced from Epidemic Sound includes ‘After the Freak Show’ by Luella Gren and ‘The Cold Shoulder’ by Kylie Dailey.
Editorial feedback kindly provided by RACP physicians Aidan Tan and David Arroyo.
Please visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Login to MyCPD to record listening and reading as a prefilled learning activity. Subscribe to new episode email alerts or search for ‘Pomegranate Health’ in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox or any podcasting app.