Many ongoing challenges are evident in rural and regional areas to ensure there is an available  health workforce with the confidence and capability to provide quality palliative and end of life care The Gippsland palliative care workforce model is built on small teams of specialist trained palliative care professionals supporting generalist practitioners who predominantly provide palliative care. Recruiting of nurses with specialised palliative care knowledge is ongoing, complemented by steps to empower and support nurses already working within these settings to ‘grow our own’ specialist palliative care nursing workforce capacity. 

An important tool in this strategy has been the Gippsland Region Palliative Care Consortium (GRPCC) Palliative Care Skills Matrix (PCSM). Informed by the Benner Framework, the GRPCC PCSM is a baseline self-assessment of individual nurse’s confidence and capability in their palliative care knowledge and skills. The GRPCC PCSM provides a tool for nurses to reflect on their practice, and provides information at individual, managerial and departmental levels. Organisationally and regionally, the PCSM can inform coordination of targeted education to build workforce capacity.  

Support for individual nurses who have undertaken the GRPCC PCSM is the Professional Development Opportunities Booklet, which is used to support self-directed professional development and is mapped to the National Palliative Care and NSQHS standards. Regional data from the GRPCC PCSM identified limited numbers of nurses were pursuing post graduate palliative care education and qualifications. This, along with the regional data trends, drove the development of the ‘Transition to Specialty Palliative Care Practice’ (TSP) course. This unique hybrid course, developed in collaboration with Palliative Care South East and The Australian College of Nursing, is a supportive bridge for those nurses who wish to pursue post-graduate study, but have not progressed the aspiration yet.  TSP has  expanded  to other Victorian  regional areas with 25 nurses undertaking the course.