Culturally Brilliant Palliative Care

People from new and emerging community backgrounds experience a range of barriers to accessing and engaging with palliative care health and support services. These include:

·         limited awareness/understanding of palliative care;

·         language, communication and health literacy issues;

·         reluctance to talk about death and dying;

·         lack of culturally appropriate resources;

·         difficulty accommodating cultural practices in palliative care settings;

·         distrust of services;

·         racism discrimination and cultural stereotyping.

The Brillance Team partnered with three new and emerging communities to talk about the key issues facing community members in the Northern Adelaide area, particularly those that attend the Lyell McEwin and Modbury Hospitals.

Building on a wider program of work to determine the ingredients that contribute to brilliant palliative care, this project aimed to identify what contributes to brilliant palliative care for South Australians of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds – that is, care that brought joy during poignant moments and/or exceeded expectations.

The result was a series of videos where members of the Bhutanese, Syrian and African communities openly discussed and sometimes challenged the concept of death and dying and “What is brilliant palliative care?”