Presenting the TROPICAL-VIC (Timely Referral to Outpatient Palliative Care Services in Regional Victoria) project.

Early referral to palliative care has multiple benefits. People diagnosed with advanced and incurable cancer who receive palliative care alongside usual cancer care spend less time in the hospital, manage their symptoms better, and experience a better quality of life. What’s more, their carers and families benefit, too. Despite these advantages, most people will not receive palliative care until the very end of life, if at all. In regional areas, available palliative services are fragmented, under-resourced, and often their services are misunderstood. In Border regions, these issues are compounded by differing jurisdictions and systems.

The Albury Wodonga Regional Cancer Centre is located on the border of New South Wales and Victoria and has a primary catchment of more than 250,000 people. In 2023, a team of clinicians and researchers were awarded a 3-year research grant to help co-design and implement an early referral to palliative care model, including an outpatient clinic. Constrained by time and resources, the TROPICAL-VIC (Timely Referral to Outpatient Palliative Care Services in Regional Victoria) project required a rethink of traditional co-design methods.

Presented by Dr Stacey Rich (BPsychSc, PhD), with A/Prof Craig Underhill facilitating. 

This presentation will describe the brief co-design process developed to ensure that evidence-based models of care developed in metropolitan settings could be adapted to suit the local context. The presentation is centred on the ultimately creative and rewarding process of “making it up as we go along”.  The secret to what makes it rewarding will be revealed (spoiler: it’s the people).

Dr Stacey Rich is a Health Services Researcher with a focus on supportive care for people with cancer. Her undergraduate degree and subsequent PhD in Psychological Science provided her with a deep curiosity for research methods. She is the project manager for TROPICAL-VIC (Timely Referral to Outpatient Palliative Care Services in Regional Victoria). Like most regionally-based researchers, she has a research track record that, on the surface, resembles Aldi’s middle aisle. She has researched everything from eudaimonic well-being in low-consumption lifestyles, to fear of cancer recurrence, geriatric oncology, family services, and care workforce.  As a result, she has dabbled in a wide variety of research methods; all without leaving regional Victoria!  Stacey’s experience of caring for her mother through advanced pancreatic cancer to the end of her life gives her an inside perspective on what happens when families do not access palliative care until it is too late.