Supportive and Palliative Care Unit

The Supportive and Palliative Care Unit at Monash Health is a Monash University academic unit focused on excellence of care for patients and their families who have a life limiting illness.
Our unit comprises:

16 bed level-3 inpatient unit with admissions in excess of 600 per annum
Bi-disciplinary medical/nursing consult team covering the Monash Health Network and with annual consultations numbering in excess of 1500 per year
Oncopain outpatients clinic

The unit is an accredited palliative medicine registrar training facility with all our physicians being accredited supervisors of the Chapter of Palliative Medicine (Royal Australasian College of Physicians). We also provide undergraduate medical student palliative medicine teaching for Monash University, teaching for resident medical officers, physician training registrars and nursing - undergraduate, post graduate and nurse practitioners.

Graduate research projects

Our research focuses

Current projects

Telehealth for Rural Palliative Care; A prospective controlled pilot study of video-consultations for patients & carers of a domiciliary palliative care service (Victorian Cancer Agency Grant).
Efficacy of low-dose methadone as an antitussive for patients with malignancy (Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Award).
Opioid titration : A new algorithm for opioid selection and titration for cancer patients to challenge current practice.
ED ‘Big Data’ in collaboration with Monash University Faculty of Information Technology – Preliminary work being undertaken with Victorian Emergency Department dataset.
Vertebroplasty for Cancer Patients: Research in collaboration with the Monash Health Interventional Radiology Department.
Oncopain Clinic – First oncological refractory pain clinic in Victoria. Capture research data including pain & symptoms, performance status and QOL, data to assess the effectiveness of the clinic to avert ED presentations and admissions.
The changing nature of patients being admitted to Palliative Care units: analysis of patients being admitted within 24-72 hours of death.
Effectiveness of Palliative Medicine teaching to undergraduate students: survey results of students on completion of the teaching program and again as junior medical officers at Monash Health.
An audit of the effects of ketamine in palliative care patients with refractory pain
Caregivers experiences of end of life care for patients in General Medicine
Improving utilisation of specialist palliative care services in geriatric and rehabilitation units
QT Auditing in Palliative Care Patients on Methadone.

To promote collaborative research and identifying important areas for clinical and translational research our physicians are members of the following bodies:

Palliative Care Clinical Network which reports to the Department of Health and assists palliative care consortia state wide in clinical tools, research and clinical policy. An efficacious platform to receive information about prospective areas of required research from consortia and disseminates findings and suggested practice changes. Membership includes: Department of Health Victoria, Palliative Care Consortia managers, Palliative Care Victoria, Clinicians from both rural and metro Victoria and Cabrini Health Palliative Care.
Cancer Council Victoria: Palliative Medicine Network – supportive of collaborative research and attended by all key palliative medicine physicians state-wide. Ability to both receive input for areas of required clinical research as well as output to members and their organizations.
Victorian Southern Palliative Care Consortia – ability to disseminate research findings into clinical practice and identify areas of required research as membership includes hospital and community palliative care services statewide.
Victorian Integrated Cancer Streams
Gippsland Regional Palliative Care Consortium (GRPCC)
Victorian Palliative Medicine Training Program (VPMTP)
Palliative Care Research Network Victoria
Australian Lung Trials Group