Background: Open conversations about death, dying and palliative care need to take place in aged care, however, people need to feel comfortable and not confronted. 

Aim: This abstract presents an innovative project activity undertaken to encourage conversations around death, dying and end of life care in aged care.  

Method: The activity was designed as a ‘Coffee Cart Competition’ and was part of ELDAC, a national project to support palliative care in aged care. Aged care services were invited to self-nominate to host a morning tea via the project’s page. Eligible services were supplied with a morning/afternoon tea pack and some printed conversation starters. Services needed to provide us with a photograph of their event to enter the draw to win a coffee cart visit. All services were invited to share their experience of participation via a feedback interview after the draw. 

Result: 102 nominations were received; 49 services held a morning/afternoon tea to enter the draw. Residential [77%], and home care [23%] services, from metropolitan [58%], rural [34%], and regional locations [8%] participated. Nine services provided feedback via an interview. 

Submitted photographs demonstrated genuine and creative engagement. Feedback interviews indicated that the morning/afternoon tea enabled open and organic conversations about death, dying and end of life caring. The conversations allowed collegial sharing of knowledge and experiences and prompted some to consider addition training and education in palliative care. At some services these conversations led to identification of missed care opportunities prompting service managers to consider improvement processes to improve their service’s palliative care practices.

Conclusion: The coffee cart competition demonstrated that a light-hearted approach of having a cuppa can create meaningful engagement within the sector, enable conversations around end of life while providing service level benefits and therefore quality of care.