Generalist advanced shared palliative care (GASP): methadone use in palliative care – what, why, who, when, where, how?

This informative session will equip health care professionals with the knowledge and confidence to participate in shared care between GPs and specialist community palliative care services. The focus is on opioid analgesia, adjuvant analgesia, and methadone use.

Methadone is crucial for pain management in palliative care but presents challenges such as pharmacological complexities and potential cardiac risks. The session provides interprofessional clinical decision support to ensure safe and effective methadone therapy management for palliative care patients.

Key components of this session include interactive case study analysis and essential knowledge provision, covering:

• Opioid use in palliative care: overview and HealthPathways Melbourne demonstration.
• Adjuvant analgesia in palliative care: crash course on supplementary pain management.
• Methadone in palliative care: Detailed insights into the benefits and challenges of its use.

Banksia Palliative Care Service’s generalist advanced shared palliative care (GASP) program aims to enhance palliative care through collaboration between general practitioners and specialist community services. It focuses on complex scenarios where palliative medicine specialists support GPs to improve patient care.

This is the first of a series of GASP events designed to support interprofessional clinical decision-making.

Speaker:

Dr Ruwani Mendis is a consultant palliative care physician and medical oncologist with sessional appointments in cancer services at Western Health and an honorary appointment at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. In addition, she is a palliative care physician with Banksia Palliative Care Service, the community palliative care provider to the north eastern suburbs of Melbourne. In this capacity, she works with a team of specialist nurses and allied health workers and collaborates with primary care providers in the region to support palliative care patients in their homes. 

She is engaged in palliative care research and is the Research Lead for Western Health and the principal Investigator in a number of palliative care trials. She also teaches medical students at the Western Health Clinical School. 

Being a specialist in both cancer and palliative care, she has a unique understanding of the issues impacting cancer patients from early on to later in their diagnosis, and is passionate about the early involvement of good palliative care to optimise quality of life at all stages.

Dr. Chien-Che Lin is a palliative medicine specialist consultant at several hospitals and community palliative care services in Victoria, including Banksia Palliative Care Service. He also works as a general practitioner. Committing to support people with progressive, incurable disease to live as well as possible with the burden of diseases and dying, he has continuously dedicated clinical and administrative commitments to improve care in the community. He is actively involved in teaching and supervision of medical students and medical specialist trainees, aiming to inspire a practice culture of both academic excellence and human compassion

Learning outcomes:

• Increase participant confidence in use of opioids in palliative care.
• Increase participant confidence in use of adjuvant analgesia in palliative care.
• Increase participant confidence in participating advanced shared care for methadone use in palliative care.
• By the end of this activity participants will have improved professional connections with local community palliative care services.