Capacity Building in Palliative Care

King Saud University for Health Sciences, National Guards health Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

*Corresponding Author:

Abdul-Rahman Jazieh
King Saud University for Health Sciences
National Guards Health Affairs
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
E-mail: jazieha@ngha.med.sa

Received date: Februay 11, 2013; Accepted date: Februay 16, 2013; Published date: Februay 18, 2013

Citation: Jazieh AR (2013) Capacity Building in Palliative Care. J Palliative Care Med 3:138.doi: 10.4172/2165-7386.1000138

Copyright: © 2013 Jazieh AR. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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As a new discipline of medicine, Palliative Care (PC) field is facing major challenges such as lack of awareness of Health Care Professionals (HCP) and the public about its value in minimizing sufferings and improving the quality of life of patients with various ailments. However, a major challenge for the dissemination of palliative care as a main stream discipline of health care is the serious shortage of qualified and well trained health care professionals and support staff [1]. The structured programs to train PC professionals are young and scarce worldwide and the interest to pursue this sub-specialty is timid.

The shortage of qualified and well trained manpower is not limited to physicians but it involves all other health care professionals such as nurses, pharmacists, educators, psychologists, social workers and other members of multidisciplinary teams. Therefore, a systematic approach to build capacity in this field is direly needed. This overview may help those who are interested in addressing the important need at least to think about it in comprehensive and strategic way. The approach to build capacity should address the following categories: The targeted health care professions, required skills and knowledge, and the methods of education.

Health Care Professionals

It is very important to keep in mind the following points about HCP involved in palliative care

1. It is critical for all health care professionals to understand the concept of palliative care as each health care professional’s deals with patients will encounter issues relevant to palliation and symptom management [2].

2. While PC education should start as early as possible in graduate school, it is not too late for practicing HCP to have specific education and training in their area of interest.

3. Subspecialists should assume their full responsibilities in contributing to the palliation of patients and not refusing interventions just because “patient is palliative”

Required Skills and Knowledge

All HCPs who are involved in patient care should have essential knowledge and skills in palliative care (Table 1).

Table 1: Requirements for palliative care training for different health care professionals.

The education in PC should start with the students to incorporate the principles of PC into their education and training. Physicians of all specialties should maintain adequate knowledge and skills of PC based on their area of expertise (Table 2).

Table 2: Examples of palliative care services based on scope of practice.

Multidisciplinary team members should also get educated in various aspects of PC based on their scope of service.

Methods of Capacity Building

1. Incorporation of PC in the academic curricula of all HCP schools.

2. Incorporate the principles of PC in all residency and fellowship trainings.

3. Create more fully accredited PC fellowship programs to train experts in the fields.

4. Offer focused short duration tailored training about certain aspects of palliative care.

5. Develop train the trainers’ workshops to develop local expertise in capacity building.

6. Use remote education, remote consultation on line training to access available resources and expertise [3].

References

1. Grant M, Elk R, Ferrell B, Morrison RS, von Gunten CF (2009) Current Status of Palliative Care, Education, and Research. CA Cancer J Clin 59: 327-335.
2. Schneider N, Mitchell GK, Murray SA (2010) Palliative care in urgent need of recognition and development in general practice: the example of Germany BMC Fam Pract 11: 66.
3. Pelayo M, Cebrián D, Areosa A, Agra Y, Izquierdo JV (2011) Effects of online palliative care training on knowledge, attitude and satisfaction of primary care physicians BMC Family Practice 12: 37.