Travel date: May 18, 2017
Name of Meeting/Event/Activity: 15th European Association Palliative Care Conference
Origin: Yerevan, Aremenia / Destination: Madrid, Spain
"Every next Congress gives me growing confidence in my professional work. Attendance at the 15th World Congress of EAPC played an important role for me because I had the opportunity to compare how things going in my country and in others. The Congress was huge, as usual, and was very well organized. I attended many sessions, listen to many brilliant lectures of famous professors, whose books shaped my knowledge in palliative care. I attended several sessions which were not only very interesting but gave me the clue how to work in particular tough situations. I communicated with many specialists in PC from other countries; we exchanged our experience, our approaches. Every conversation, every shared experience was of value for me. Sometimes just one word said from another specialist can inspire you and encourage to new achievements. Every next Congress gives me growing confidence in my professional work. Attendance at the 15th World Congress of EAPC played an important role for me because I had the opportunity to compare how things going in my country and in others. The Congress was huge, as usual, and was very well organized. I attended many sessions, listen to many brilliant lectures of famous professors, whose books shaped my knowledge in palliative care. I attended several sessions which were not only very interesting but gave me the clue how to work in particular tough situations. I communicated with many specialists in PC from other countries; we exchanged our experience, our approaches. Every conversation, every shared experience was of value for me. Sometimes just one word said from another specialist can inspire you and encourage to new achievements. During Congress I met my peers, couches and mentors from LDI Cohort II. That was the sweetest part of the Congress.
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Our Government has accepted the strategy of developing the palliative care in Armenia. Currently, as a member of a working group, I am working on the implementation of palliative care. The experience, knowledge, obtained at the Congress will be shared among my colleagues from a working group of Ministry of Health, as well as with people who are really working in palliative care on the daily basis. I will continue my teaching in palliative care, share my personal, enriched experience, and this way promotes palliative care in my country.
Everything is well organized and delivered.
People are suffering and dying the same way in all countries - poor, developing, not developing and high-income countries. The death, this ugly woman, doesn’t wait until your country becomes rich, to offer the best care. What we can offer to those people: to die as a human being with dignity or to die abandoned, lack of elementary comfortable environment, medications, surrounded by the members of the family, who don’t know how to help their suffering relatives, and themselves. Sometimes, as a physician, the only thing you can suggest is just your empathy, sometimes you can do nothing because of many objective reasons, the medical service is helpless, and this is absolutely devastating. But here is the palliative care, which arms us with knowledge, skills, ability to take care of thousands of suffering, giving them opportunity to live free of pain, free of exhausting symptoms, die in peace with dignity. The IAHPC, comes to help suffering people worldwide, because its mission is to make the palliative care available for every single patient in Asia, Africa, in Europe and all over the world, by helping health workers and patients. IAHPC works under the tireless leadership of Liliana de Lima, who I have been fortunate to know personally, and who is the role model for me. I want to thank IAHPC for inviting me, and for the work done by IAHPC in promoting hospice and palliative care in low and middle-income countries. I believe that thanks to the support of IAHPC we can gain the knowledge and skill necessary to treat distressing symptoms in dying patients. Now we can go far in providing quality of life to patients with life threatening and life limiting illnesses in our countries.