As if presenting to over 800 conference delegates wasn’t intimidating enough, local researcher Linda Jaffray felt the ground move beneath her feet when she discovered she would be following guest speaker and Australian icon Ita Buttrose, and the man after whom her award was named, Professor Ian Maddocks (Senior Australian of the Year 2013).
Linda, who is based at the UTAS Rural Clinical School Burnie, was awarded the Ian Maddocks Guest Lecture at the 12th Australian Palliative Care Conference in Canberra (3-6 September) for her abstract entitled “Caring for my imagined future: Important considerations in electronic advance care planning for older, community dwelling adults with chronic, life limiting illness”.
Linda’s presentation centred on the work she is undertaking with fellow UTAS researchers Cathy Smith and Professor Isabelle Ellis (Chief Investigator) on their project “The Electronic Advance Care Planning (eACP) in Community Project”. Their research looks to bring together what is known in the literature about electronic advance care planning for older people in the community setting, with the knowledge, skills and practice wisdom of clinicians, policy makers and other key people working in this space. This work has culminated in the development of "The Dignity of Life Inventory Model of Advance Care Planning" where respect and dignity of the older person is the central concern.
Ms Jaffray says “Caring For My Imagined Future is an invitation for people to think about and talk about what matters to them as they approach the end of their life, and what role we can play in supporting people to live a dignified, valued filled life until the end.”
Linda’s presentation was well received, with key leaders in the field interested in ensuring that the body of work she has been engaged in informs the National agenda to place Advance Care Directives in the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR ).
“We wanted to come up with a model that resonated not only with service providers, but also with older people themselves. A model that addresses the complexities of this area and that is based on the best available evidence” said Ms Jaffray.
For Linda, the highlight of the conference was attending the Presidents Dinner where she was able to meet Professor Maddocks himself and speak with him about his experiences and vision for palliative care.
“He is a world leader in palliative Care, and he is so inspiring. I have come away from the conference affirmed with the importance of continuing to work towards enhancing the delivery of compassionate and effective palliative care, particularly in rural areas where there are often significant challenges to deliver services in the way we would like to”.
“Another fabulous outcome of the conference is that having been provided with the opportunity to showcase the work we do at the Rural Clinical School, we have added to an emerging recognition of the innovative and important research that we are engaged with in Tasmania.”
