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IAHPC's Traveling Scholar Program
As a part of the Graduate Certificate in Health (Palliative Medicine) I was required to participate in a classroom intensive in Singapore for 12 days. IAHPC was kind enough to award me a traveling scholarship in order to attend this intensive.
This was my first visit outside my country. During the intensive, I learned about clinical management, communication, critical appraisal of literature, organisation and barriers to palliative care. I also had the opportunity to interact with an international faculty including Dr David Currow, Dr Cynthia Goh, Dr Rosalie Shaw plus colleagues from 5 different countries.
I came to realise that South Asian countries are very similar to each other, and though we may have different models of palliative care delivery, we all struggle with similar problems – organisation, difficult symptoms and our personal feelings.
I am happy to say that thanks to IAHPC, I am now part of a network of palliative care professionals who became friends despite spending a short time together, and who were able to share intense moments.
This intensive taught me how to look at old things in a new light, for example not just management of emergencies, but how to anticipate and apply proactive management to patients, families and ourselves. This was an opportunity for sharpening old skills while developing new ones.
Another important aspect of what I learned was the need to reflect on the process of learning. We gained a cognitive appreciation of what we learned, how we learned, and the techniques used in the past while analysing whether there will be an impact on our future practice. I think this was an important exercise that will make us better “learners” for life. This is particularly useful for many of us in developing countries who do not have regular opportunities to interact and learn from eachother.
I would like to thank IAHPC and Ms Liliana de Lima for helping me with one of the barriers to learning – finances. I hope I can contribute to IAHPC’s goal of improving palliative care in developing countries by passing on to other students of palliative medicine what I have learned.
Dr Charu Singh
Associate Professor
Department of Pain and Palliative Medicine
Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences
Kochi, Kerala
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