Needs Rounds/Clinical Reviews

Palliative Care Needs Rounds / Clinical Reviews are regular staff triage meetings, where aged care staff and specialist palliative care clinicians review and discuss residents who are at greater risk of dying without a plan in place. You can find out more about Needs Rounds here.

This YouTube video on Needs Rounds (7.08 minutes) explains how they work. Residential aged care homes that are interested in conducting Needs Rounds should contact their local community palliative care service.

Click here to locate the community palliative care service in your catchment. Ask the palliative care service if they have a dedicated aged care team which specialises in helping residential aged care homes to conduct needs rounds.

A valuable adjunct to Needs Rounds are death audits. Click here to access the latest version of the ELDAC death audit tool.

ISBAR (Introduction / Identify, Situation, Background Assessment, Recommendation) is an effective tool to support clinical handover of a resident.

Goals of Care can be communicated using ISBAR to support handover. The use of a standardised format can assist the effective transfer of information.

Click here to access The Victorian Department of Health Clinical Handover for Older People in Hospital which utilises the ISBAR framework.

This handover video for Residential Aged Care Facilities provides a guide to supporting effective communication between the acute setting and residential aged care for a resident with complex, chronic healthcare needs. Click here for handover YouTube video (4.20 minutes).