Travel date: July 27, 2017
Name of Meeting/Event/Activity: Asia Pacific Hospice Conference
Origin: Nilai, Malaysia / Destination: Suntec City, Singapore
Thank you IAHPC for supporting my travel to this conference. As a new comer to the world of palliative care,I was pleasantly surprised at how passionate many around my region are in developing further this work and was inevitably inspired.There is so much to be done in Malaysia and being at this conference helped me see our shortfalls and potential to improve with the ideas and models shared by the forefront leaders.
As one of the many stakeholders in palliative care of Malaysia, one particular plenary reminded me of the huge responsibility we have in not just ensuring opioid availability but also adequate tracking,monitoring of dispensing and pushing for enforcement so it is also not misused.Currently Malaysia is dependant on prescribing doctors to educate patients on side effects and also ethically prescribe these drugs. Together with the right committee members at Ministry of Health we hope to highlight the importance of this issue and integrate a feasible way of also monitoring opioid abuse cases and continous advocacy and education of healthcare workers. We were also fortunate enough to visit a hospice of our choice,and I was delighted to have visited St Andrews Community Hospital,a subacute step-down model of care in collaboration with Changi General Hospital.As a future leader of my own Palliative Unit, it gave me an opportunity to the type of therapies/frastructure that could be incorporated into my facility,especially for dementia patients.A more holistic care with various religious bodies to provide spiritual support is also needed to cater for our multiracial country,very similar to Singapore. These knowledge obtained during this visit and many contacts all over the region, would help me to exchange ideas and widen my horizon in how to continually provide better palliative care.
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