Tamworth hospital Aboriginal health worker Renee Moore takes on sorry business in a first for palliative care

It's been a long road to the Tamworth hospital.

Renee Moore, a Gomeroi woman from Quirindi, is a descendant from a member of the stolen generations.

As Tamworth's first Indigenous palliative care worker it's an extraordinary opportunity to fight a different kind of pain.

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"I had to close the gap within my own family, now it's trying to close the gap within palliative care services," she said.

Aboriginal people in the Tamworth region remain sceptical of palliative care - healthcare provided at the end of a person's life - for the same historic reasons they're often sceptical of other government institutions, she said.

It's Mrs Moore's job to act as a conduit between Indigenous people and their health care system, to close the gap and improve equity in the service.

"[Among Indigenous communities] there's not a lot of uptake in palliative care services and just there's that fear of going to a GP, to those appointments," she said.

"This role is just to really support, advocate, identify their cultural considerations and then I can communicate those considerations to service providers, GPs, allied health, be a conduit to basically set them up with services that they need to either die at home or in hospital."

Mrs Moore did not start in palliative care, but has had more than her fair share of experience with death.

For seven-and-a-half years she worked in the radiation centre at the North West Cancer Centre.

In 2018 she was seconded to work on a new project that eventually led to the development of a supportive care booklet for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Into the Dreaming.

It's sharing the experience of patients that drew her into the job.

There's something special about helping a person get back to country to die, she said.

"There's something about being on country - that's home, it's where you began, it's got all the people you love and you're being surrounded by all these people. You're going out how you want to go out," she said.

"Someone's letting you into into their life at the end of their journey, and it's quite a special thing to be part of."

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She will work to give people "the most pain free and dignified end of life into the dreaming and sorry business possible".

The new health worker will support patients and their families at both the Nioka palliative care inpatient unit and the community palliative care service.

She is a point of contact for Aboriginal Liason Officers at hospitals across the region and will provide support for end of life care at Gunnedah, Barraba, Manilla, Walcha and her home town of Quirindi.

About 5.8 per cent of the population of the Hunter New England Local Health District are Indigenous, approximately 52,990 people. There is limited data about the rate of uptake of palliative care among the region's Indigenous people, but it's believed to be a low percentage.

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