Written by Professor Jennifer Tieman (@JenniferTieman), Director, Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death, and Dying.

So why do conferences matter? Surely Covid-19 has taught us that we can connect virtually and share everything digitally. The Oceanic Palliative Care Conference 2023 was an important re-engagement between colleagues and between health providers, consumers, and researchers. While it was a chance to show and tell, more importantly it was a meeting place for ideas, problems and futures. For palliative care which intersects with all care sectors, and which touches all parts of our community, the conference put on display the many facets of this complex, rich and important part of life and systems.

More than 1,400 people gathered in Sydney. RePaDD was part of the mix. We set up our booths, caught up with Flinders alumni, met with potential students and research partners, and raced to the conference sessions. Plenaries introduced key issues and challenged the attendees. Co-design and authentic engagement with patients, carers, families and consumers, End of Life models for people living with dementia, meaningful partnerships within our region, the care economy, VAD, Covid-19 were just some of the issues being grappled with.

Flinders was splendidly represented by the teaching team, by our researchers, our RHD students and our project staff. Deidre Morgan called out the unique and specialist contribution of each of the individual allied health professions while Sara Javanparast argued for equity in palliative policy. Jen Tieman and Deb Rawlings challenged the sector to consider the community voice heard in Dying2Learn and Deb followed up with insights into the Death Doula workforce. Kim Devery reported on End-of-Life Essentials outcomes while Amanda Adams and Priyanka Vandersman spoke to ELDAC initiatives. Recent and current RHD students Paul Tait, Kathy Boschen and Kate Jurgens shared their research on complexity in community pharmacy, end of life for people with disability, and palliative care bereavement services. And then there were the posters. We are now sharing the research and insights that are found in these conference posters in a new section in the RePaDD website. Enjoy these posters that highlight our projects, our researchers, and our students!