Almost every Australian family will navigate some form of chronic illness, and inevitably will experience dying. Palliative care helps people with life-limiting illness, including multimorbidity and frailty in ageing, to live as fully as possible, not just in the final days of life.

A prepared health and aged care workforce can better support people through palliative and end-of-life care. Researchers in the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death, and Dying (RePaDD), part of Flinders University’s Caring Futures Institute, are examining the issues and challenges experienced by people living with a life-limiting illness, their carers, and the health and care professionals supporting them. Through this, they are generating evidence to inform better palliative care, death and dying outcomes.

Dr Olivia Farrer, a dietitian, tertiary educator and researcher at Flinders, has a particular interest in allied health workforce capability in palliative care, and how digital education can influence practice.

Her research operates at the intersection of health, education and policy systems, emphasising collaboration, co-design and system-level thinking to ensure that research outputs can be embedded in everyday practice.

“Palliative care is not only delivered by specialist teams. Under Australia’s National Palliative Care Strategy, it is everyone’s business, across hospitals, aged care, primary care, community services, and across the lifespan – requiring a generalist workforce for whom palliative care has to be integrated into broad practice, rather than just a specialty area,” explains Dr Farrer.

“However, many health professionals, particularly in allied health and aged care, report that they feel underprepared, under-supported or uncertain about their role in palliative and end-of-life care.”

With this in mind, Dr Farrer is translating the lived experience of people using and working in our healthcare systems into tangible resources to improve palliative and end-of-life care.

Her coordination of the Allied Health Toolkit for End of Life Directions (ELDAC) project is designed to support the aged care workforce deliver best-practice palliative care across residential and primary care settings.

Dr Farrer is also the senior research fellow for national palliative care project CareSearch (including palliAGED), a web-based multi-million-dollar project funded by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, which connects health professionals and the general public to trustworthy, evidence-based information and resources in palliative care across the lifespan.

Across the projects, the health and aged care workforce can access evidence summaries, learning activities and modules, practice tip sheets, tools and information resources. Each is informed by sector or consumer need, and best-practice evidence.

During April 2026, CareSearch and palliAGED websites received more than 30,000 visits, demonstrating the broad reach and impact of this work.

“The project work I lead addresses wider workforce capability through listening to the experiences of clinicians, older people, patients and families, and translating evidence and policy into practical, accessible tools that support better care, wherever people are, and whoever is supporting them,” says Dr Farrer.

She recognises the critical role of allied health professionals in supporting quality of life, function, communication, psychosocial wellbeing and family support. However, evidence for allied health in end-of-life care is limited, and palliative care is often poorly articulated in education pathways and inconsistently embedded in everyday practice.

Subsequently, alongside her work to deliver national palliative care project deliverables, Dr Farrer is also engaged in research to inform project resources and help advocate for the important role allied health can play.

This work helps clinicians who want to help but don’t have the right training, confidence, or systems to facilitate this, and, within funding limits, support best practice for allied health in palliative and end-of-life care.

“The work ahead is about closing the loop between evidence and practice,” says Dr Farrer, “not just knowing what good care looks like, but understanding how we embed it, and designing the education and tools that actually shift behaviour.”

Drawing on implementation science, digital education and qualitative inquiry rooted in the lived experience of clinicians and consumers, Dr Farrer is working toward a research program that generates insights in real time, co-designs solutions with the people who will use them, and builds an evidence base to show what works, and why.

It’s an approach that positions palliative care as a capability woven into the fabric of allied health practice, wherever that practice happens to take place.