Benjamin Franklin told us there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.
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Well a group of medical professionals from across the territory have joined together to make one of those much more bearable for Canberrans.
The inaugural ACT End of Life and Palliative Care Forum was held this week and brought together a broad spectrum of clinicians involved in caring for patients at the end of their life.
ACT Health director of palliative care, Michael Chapman, said the forum showcased a lot of research conducted in the ACT that even clinicians in Canberra had been previously unaware of.
He said the overall goal was to identify gaps in palliative care in the territory, and surrounding region, and develop ways to tackle those problems.
One of the biggest problems with palliative care anywhere, he said, is that people often did not know what it actually involved.
"Palliative care is doing everything you can to make each day as good as it can be for someone with an illness that you can't take away," Dr Chapman said.
"All of us die at some point and palliative care is about the best form of living up until that point."
He said palliative care was completely dependent on the individual patient's needs and what they required to make that day the best day it could be.
"It might be tackling one area like pain management," he said, "or it might be just providing more information about their illness, or it might even be spiritual support."
The ACT trialled a pilot program called Inspired, which saw specialist palliative care nurses introduced to aged care facilities to treat a small subset of patients requiring the most acute palliative care.
The idea behind it is the specialist nurses will improve the aged care facility's ability on the whole to provide palliative care within the aged care facility and thereby keep people in a place they are comfortable for longer, and reduce costly hospitalisations.
Dr Chapman also advised the ACT was looking at adopting the world standard approach of patients beginning palliative care at the time of diagnosis of a terminal illness, rather than just in its final stages.
He said beginning palliative care earlier could improve a patient's quality of life, the welfare of their family and one study even suggested it could help patients live longer with their illness.
Dr Chapman said palliative care was an area that had received a much greater focus in recent years as people began to understand the importance of discussing the best possible way to die. He also attributed some of the attention to the hotly contested issue of voluntary assisted dying.
"The negative thing in that dialogue is that it focuses on the horror of natural dying," Dr Chapman said.
"Palliative care is about making that process as good as it can be."
However, he was adamant that despite anyone's personal beliefs towards assisted dying, it was a vital conversation for our community to have. Both to ensure the community works together to offer the best options for everyone and, in the case assisted dying one day does become available in the ACT, it is done as safely as possible.
While Dr Chapman has previously highlighted the shortages in palliative care in the ACT, he said the territory was incredibly well served by Clare Holland House which consistently outperforms national benchmarks.
His goal now is to continue to grow the palliative care capabilities at the Canberra Hospital, hopefully with a specific ward, for those that can't be treated elsewhere.
