Southern Adelaide Palliative Service for Health Professionals
Southern Adelaide Palliative Service (SAPS) is a multidisciplinary specialist palliative care service providing inpatient consultation, inpatient care at Laurel Hospice, medical outpatient services, community care coordination and rural support across the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network.
SAPS offers:
- Specialist palliative care assessment and support
- Provision of information and recommendations to enable clinicians, the patient, their families, friends, and carer/s, to best control symptoms, maximise function, maintain quality of life and promote comfort
- Coordination of community-based services to support patients in their homes
- Bereavement support.
Service areas
Laurel Hospice
Laurel Hospice is a 15 bed specialist palliative care unit in the Rehabilitation and Palliative Care Building at Flinders Medical Centre (FMC). Hospice support focuses on complex symptom management and end of life care.
Liaison
Provides support to palliative care patients admitted to FMC, Noarlunga Hospital (NH) and the Repatriation Hospital Precinct (RHP). We provide assistance to patients, families/carers and treating teams. This includes best symptom management, end of life decision making and discharge planning advice. The liaison service also plays an important role in facilitating hospice admissions.
The liaison team can be contacted via FMC switchboard.
Palliative Care Clinic
Palliative Care Cinics are provided at Flinders Medical Centre, GP Plus Noarlunga and GP Plus Marion. Clinics provide assessment and monitoring of appropriate patients.
Rural support
Palliative medicine support is provided to three rural regions in South Australia: South East Palliative Care (based at Mt Gambier); Riverland (based at Barmera); and South Coast Palliative Care (based at Victor Harbor).
Community
The SAPS community service provides a nurse-led multidisciplinary care coordination for patients needing specialist palliative care. The key features of care coordination include:
- Identifying and understanding each patient, and their family/carers, goals of care
- developing and implementing a care plan
- helping the patient understand and self-manage their condition(s)
- working with organisations to support the patient in the community.
Eligibility
A person can be referred to SAPS if they meet the following criteria:
- Have a progressive, life limiting illness
- Primary goals of care are to control symptoms, maximise function, maintain quality of life and provide comfort
- The patient, or their decision maker is aware of, understands and has agreed to a palliative care referral.
Referrals
Referrals can be made by medical practitioners, other health professionals, the patient or their family members/carers.
Patients admitted in a public hospital are referred to specialist palliative care using local procedures accessible via the staff intranet.
For people at home or in residential aged care - referrals can be made to SAPS by faxing a completed Palliative Care Referral Form (PDF 610KB) to (08) 8404 2119. To assist us in triaging your referral, please ensure all relevant supporting documents are attached.
If your referral is urgent, please call the service on (08) 8404 2058 and ask to speak to the triage nurse.