VAD Professional Development and Pastoral Care Needs

A survey for health, aged care and community service professionals.

Voluntary Assisted Dying will be available to residents in WA who meet a set of legislatively prescribed criteria from 1 July this year.

An increasing number of health, aged care and community services professionals have expressed concern to us that training, professional development and pastoral care systems have not yet been considered to support them once Voluntary Assisted Dying is introduced.  To begin this process, we have developed a survey to identify what is needed.

While we acknowledge VAD is not a part of palliative care, we do have role to play in providing information and support to our members and others in the sector who are likely to be fielding VAD questions and requests from community members, as well as those more directly involved in its delivery.

In addition to determining the information, training, professional development and pastoral care needs of health, aged care and community services professionals, we are also gathering preferences for the mode and timing of these activities.

The results of this survey will be disseminated across WA and we will facilitate implementation of the survey outcomes where possible in collaboration with sector partners.

SURVEY LINK: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VADstaffcare

In order to reflect as many views as possible we have recently extended the closing date for this survey to 31 January 2021.

You are urged to share this survey link widely across your sector and your network. If you have any questions regarding this survey, please contact us on 1300 551 704 or info@palliativecarewa.asn.au.