I wish to express my deepest gratitude to IAHPC for providing me a traveling scholarship grant to attend an educational / Twinning committee meeting at the Victoria Hospice Society from August 7 th to August 21 st in Victoria BC, Canada. Without this funding, it would have been impossible for me to attend. The visit was organized by the Victoria Hospice Society for the purpose of exchanging information between our two organizations and helping professional and social collaboration.

I was hosted by our twinning partner, Victoria Hospice (VH), with an aim to strengthen the network of collaboration between us and to continue to share and learn from each other. The visit was the most important part of the exchange and helped to support the palliative efforts at B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Bharatpur (BPKMCH), Nepal. My participation provided me with additional new skills and learning opportunities that I can now apply to my job.

I learned a great deal about VH and their community palliative care program which has been available for a long time and I was able to share some of our cultural differences. I learned their community palliative care program operates 24 hours a day. Each shift being handled by an RN and a counselor. Counselors are not generally available in our hospices in Nepal, neither as a staff member nor as a volunteer. The counselors in VH play an important role in managing the psychological pain of patients and families. Physicians and counselors have family meetings to discover problems. The staff then attempts to develop a care plan to help ease perceived difficulties. I found Victoria’s palliative performance scale useful to assess the functional level of patients.

I was impressed with the one year of bereavement care provided by VH. I was given a copy of their bereavement manual which discusses how to design and plan a service. This should be very helpful to our hospice.

I was able to give a slide presentation about the Hospice and Community Palliative Care programs at BPKMCH, Nepal and the challenges and needs of the Nepalese people.

I was able to accompany the Palliative Response Team on community calls and visited the Victoria Hospice Research and Education departments. The Foundation staff provided me with ideas about fundraising.

During my non-clinical time, I had a fun traveling the beautiful city of Victoria, Vancouver Islands and the cultural niceties of the people living there. I had an opportunity to go to Port Alberni to visit Ty Watson House, a community Hospice, where I gave a slide presentation about our Community Palliative program in Nepal.

I want to thank Victoria BC, the Victoria Hospice Society, the staff and colleagues, the twinning committee members, the hosts and volunteers and the Nepalese Community Association for providing me with such a wonderful, warm and memorable experience.

Thank you IAHPC for the Traveling Scholarship grant and the BPKMCH’s Hospice Unit for also making this visit possible.

Mina Kumari Ranabhat , RN, BN
B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital
Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal