The Advance Project^® General Practice Training and Resources

• Registered and enrolled nurses who are currently working in Australian general practice
• General practitioners currently working in Australia
• General Practice Managers of Australian general practices

The Advance Project (General Practice) aims to enable better healthcare outcomes in Australian GP practices through:

• earlier consideration and uptake of ACP
• more efficient use of GP and nurse time in providing palliative and supportive care
• more appropriate and timely referrals to specialist palliative care services if required
• increasing confidence and comfort levels for primary care clinicians to initiate conversations with patients and their carers about ACP and palliative/supportive care
• upskilling general practice managers to support GPs and general practice nurses to overcome any barriers to successful implementation of the Advance Project tools and resources into routine practice.

The Advance Project training will help GPs and general practice nurses to work with each other to initiate ACP and, where appropriate, palliative care for older and/or chronically ill patients within the practice. The project training will also enable practice managers to support GPs and nurses to implement the Advance Project resources in their general practice.

This team-based initiation of ACP and palliative care will:

• help break down some of the barriers to ACP in general practice
• enable the practice to more efficiently:
  • identify patients who might be at risk of deteriorating and dying
  • assess and address the supportive care needs of patients who might be at risk of deteriorating and dying
  • assess and address the needs of carers of patients who might be at risk of deteriorating and dying
  • identify patients who might benefit from early referral to specialist palliative care services.

Nurses

The FREE eLearning covers concepts such as:

• Learning to initiate palliative care and ACP in general practice in a routine and sensitive way;
• Learning how nurse facilitated screening of patients and their carers will support general practices to more efficiently address patients’ and carers’ needs; and
• Developing skills to use the Advance Project screening and assessment tools.

This eLearning course for nurses will take approximately two hours to complete, or up to three hours if you provide extensive responses to the reflective components and review all of the optional links and resources. You can leave the eLearning course at any time and use the menu to return to where you left off next time.

Access eLearning for General Practice Nurses

GPs

The FREE eLearning course covers concepts such as:

• Learning about the role of GP and general practice in Advance Care Planning and palliative care
• Learning how evidence-based tools can be used to initiate Advance Care Planning discussions and assess patients and carers palliative and supportive care needs
• Learning how specialist palliative care services can support general practice in this role, if required.
• Learning how to initiate Advance Care Planning discussions and assess palliative and supportive care needs using the Advance Project Guide and assessment tools.

This eLearning course will take approximately two hours to complete. You can leave the eLearning course at any time and use the menu to return to where you left off next time.

Access eLearning for General Practitioners

Practice Managers

The FREE eLearning course covers concepts such as:

• Learning about the benefits and role of general practice in ACP and early identification and assessment of patients’ palliative and supportive care needs.
• Learning about the resources available through the Advance Project to assist general practices implement a systematic approach to initiating ACP and assessment of palliative and supportive care needs.
• Learning how practice managers can support GPs and general practice nurses to start implementing the Advance Project resources into everyday clinical practice.

The eLearning course for practice managers are covered in three learning modules. Module one takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, module two takes up to 40 minutes and module three takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Access eLearning for General Practice Managers

The program is available FREE of charge for nurses, GPs and practice managers working in Australian general practices. The Advance Project was funded by the Australian Government and was developed with input from a national consortium. The program is delivered by HammondCare in collaboration with CareSearch. There are FREE resources. The Advance Project eLearning courses for GPs, general practice nurses and practice managers have recently been refreshed and updated.

Once general practice nurses, GPs and practice managers have registered to access the Advance Project resources they will have access to a range of FREE resources online to assist them to initiate palliative care and advance care planning in general practice. This includes:

• The Advance Project Toolkit which provides access to all of the individual Advance Project assessment tools and resources.
• The toolkit is a reference guide which is designed to complement the online training, so you have all the information in one place to refer to as needed after completing the online learning modules. It contains the resources that GPs, practice nurses and practice managers will need to get started, practise their skills and incorporate the Advance Project assessment tools into everyday clinical practice.
• Our new Dementia specific suite of resources.

Access General Practice Resources

• You can watch the brief video on this page about the Advance Project training program.
• Contact the Advance Project team via AdvanceProject@hammond.com.au