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Message from the Chair
and Executive Director
Roberto Wenk, MD (Argentina)
Liliana De Lima, MHA (USA)
Dear readers:
Hello to all.
This month we will highlight three important issues:
First, as many of you already know, this year’s World Hospice and Palliative Care Day will take place on October 11th. The World Day – as it is known among the palliative care global community - is celebrated on the second Saturday of October of every year and it is an initiative of the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance (WPCA), of which IAHPC is a partner. The Aims of the World Day are:
- To share our vision to increase the availability of hospice and palliative care throughout the world by creating opportunities to speak out about the issues.
- To raise awareness and understanding of the needs - medical, social, practical, spiritual - of people living with life limiting diagnoses and their families.
- To raise funds to support and develop hospice and palliative care services around the world.
The World Day is a call for action that asks people to get involved, organize an event in their communities and raise awareness about hospice and palliative care. We invite all of you to become involved and create events to celebrate World Day in your hospice, community, hospital, palliative care setting or any other place you think could serve as a venue.
Every World Day has a distinctive theme which highlights a specific need or issue relevant to patients and/or care providers. The theme this year focuses on hospice/palliative care as a human right. The event will highlight the fact that without access to basic palliative/hospice care, people affected by life-limiting illnesses suffer unacceptable levels of distress that amount to a violation of their human rights.
To learn more, share your stories, and to become involved, please click on www.worldday.org
Second, we want to comment on some results of the online survey we recently conducted in our website. Our website is one of our most important assets and is the means by which we communicate with the palliative care community and provide you with the latest tools and resources to help start/promote/improve palliative care around the world. Our greatest challenge lies in our making the website interesting to all palliative care providers, regardless of their level of development, experience or expertise, or their differences in social, cultural and economic conditions. Our goal is to reach the global community with timely, appropriate and applicable information.
We thank all of you who responded to our call to participate and provided us feedback on ways we can better serve your needs and those of the palliative care community.
Some interesting data from the survey are:
Total respondents: 323
The majority of the respondents thought that the IAHPC website is well designed and the content is current. Eighty-five percent found what they were looking for and were extremely, or very satisfied, with the website, and 90% were likely, or very likely, to return.
Areas in which we had the lowest ratings included the ease of navigation and site design. In addition, several of you made very useful suggestions, some of which we have already put in place and we are currently working on how to apply and adopt the rest of them.
If you are interested in looking at the survey’s results, please click on
www.hospicecare.com/survey/website.html
We will continue to update and adapt the site to the needs of our readers. Please send us your comments and suggestions as we go forward.
We are now developing a global directory on education in palliative care which we hope will offer a comprehensive database of palliative care educational opportunities around the world. This directory will list only formal courses (degree and non-degree) while symposiums, congresses and workshops will continue to be listed in the events and meetings page.If your institution or university offers a course in palliative care, please take a few minutes to complete this questionnaire - listing is free and it is provided by IAHPC as a service to our readers and the global palliative care community. By listing in the directory you will increase the visibility of the course/program each month by thousands who visit our website every month.
To complete the questionnaire, click on http://www.hospicecare.com/edu/
Best wishes to all and until next month,
Roberto Wenk, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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