The Gwandalan National Palliative Care Yarning Place is a community forum that shares resources, experiences and best practices for health professionals supporting and caring for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and their families during the returning to Spirit journey.
The Yarning Place is informed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural principles such as yarning and Community of Practice methodology. Yarning requires deep listening and respectful engagement and can often include stories and meandering threads which lead back to the topic of interest. Communities of Practice are usually informal, and self-supporting and attract members across organisations from a range of disciplines to work on a common topic of interest.
The Gwandalan Yarning Place objectives may change over time as our community grows, however, initially we want to:
build workforce capacity of non-Indigenous clinicians to provide culturally informed, culturally safe and culturally responsive palliative and end-of-life care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
share and promote information on best practices, appropriate resources and relevant professional development opportunities for clinicians to assist with improved community awareness and understanding of palliative care
enhance peer support and encourage the sharing of cross-cultural knowledges to ensure workers are not operating in isolation and seek appropriate supports
encourage and support choices for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the sharing of knowledge and best practices to increase uptake of advanced care planning.