Challenges in Palliative Care Postgraduate Education in Latin America – Time for Collaboration.
On May 24th, 2014, the World Health Assembly issued the resolution 67.19:
“Strengthening of palliative care as a component of comprehensive care throughout the
life course”, which crowned the efforts of hundreds of professionals who have worked to extending the field of PC and making it available to everyone, throughout the continuum of care and across all levels.
The ultimate goal of this resolution was to promote the relief of people´s
suffering due to illness, as an integral part of health care, and to provide the human, physical
and economic resources in order to attain this objective.
To achieve this aim, the assembly encouraged the State Members, among other initiatives,
to include PC as an integral component of education and training offered to health
care providers, according to whether the educational need is basic, intermediate or specialty level.
Therefore, providing better PC education in all three levels is an essential step to extend PC and to alleviate the suffering of people around the globe.
PC is an evolving discipline. A core set of learning domains have been identified as part of the PC competencies that HCP should have in order to provide relief of suffering.
These competencies include symptom management, assessment and treatment of psychological, social and spiritual needs, decision making and communication with patients and families, among others and should be acquired by HCP according to the level of training and to the type of specialty that they will work on.
Palliat Med Hosp Care Open J. 2016; 2(1): 14-16. doi: 10.17140/PMHCOJ-2-112
