Perinatal palliative care is a multidisciplinary approach that aims to alleviate suffering and maximise quality of life through addressing physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs of the family and their foetus or newborn when a life-limiting condition has been diagnosed. Palliative care needs in this context may extend through pregnancy, childbirth and the newborn period with care provided by obstetric and midwifery staff, specialist paediatricians, neonatologists, allied health and palliative care specialists[TP1] , potentially across multiple sites. Guidelines for perinatal palliative care have been published in Australia and internationally and whilst these documents share common themes it is not yet clear how local practice has adopted these guidelines.

To develop a tool that captures the care that families referred to foetal-medicine-unit with a foetal life-limiting illness receive at a large tertiary maternity centre in Australia. 

The data capture tool for this retrospective audit was developed through review of published models for perinatal palliative care, grey literature and in consultation with experts in neonataology and palliative care. Key care items included are the care team involved in the family’s care, key time-points for counselling and decision making, how plans were shared across relevant sites and whether care provided during pregnancy, delivery and the neonatal period was congruent with plans made.

This presentation will describe the evidence used to inform development of a data capture tool which is currently being used to map current practice compared to published guidelines. The intention of this work is to recognising gaps in service-delivery and inform the development of a locally relevant model of care.