Traveling Scholars Program Report
Simone Cernesi, DR
Travel date: October 6, 2021
Name of Meeting/Event/Activity: 17th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care
Origin: Formigine, Italy / Destination: Vilvoorde, Belgium
How was this meeting/activity helpful to you?
The opportunity to participate in this meeting, even in virtual mode, gave me the opportunity to know how palliative care is developing in the world, there are many unanswered palliative care needs and still few responses in terms of policies, I received new energy to continue with the advocacy work I started with IAHPC.
Furthermore, I wanted to give visibility to the work done together with my Colleagues of the Italian College of General Practitioners and Primary Care (S.I.M.G.) bringing the commitment and the will of Italian primary care to improve the offer of qualified palliative care. The pandemic has shown how primary care is a decisive element in reaching everyone, helping to reduce inequality of access, even if our work in this meeting mainly concerned the communication aspect
In my abstract I discussed how we adapted the RED MAP communication tool to the Italian context thanks to the collaboration with S.I.M.G. colleagues, the work of the reviewers, the suggestions of Prof. Scott Murray
How will you new knowledge & acquired skills help in furthering your work in hospice and palliative care in your program/city/ or country?
I notice during the special interest groups meeting the enthusiasm of primary palliative care group, I participated in also in previous meetings before the COVID pandemic.
For advocacy in palliative care is really important to focus on primary care (as the Astana declaration shown) under universal health coverage umbrella and policies for caregiver.
I would continue to spend my time to divulge this message and to help other general practitioners or primary palliative care team to be palliative care enthusiasts.
How IAHPC Traveling Scholars Program be improved in order to help other future traveling scholars?
The IAHPC scholars programs are very useful to give many people the opportunity to deepen the different themes of palliative care, dealing with different realities is very important for those who will have to deal with advocacy in the future. Surely the possibility to participate in person is an added value. Regarding this online congress, the possibility of reviewing some recorded video interventions without the anxiety of working activity or of reviewing them to fix their contents was very important for me.
Narrative summary highlighting the needs and challanges you face
As a nursing home doctor for the older persons I cannot forget what happened to these people during the pandemic and this made me reflect on the need for advocacy towards these people and I rediscovered the importance of ethical choices in the field of frailty.
Communication with the patient and family members was fundamental during COVID, tools like RED MAP and SPIKES were helpful and became a "good practice" for me.
I also participated in the EAPC photocontest because I believe that the story in images of what happened is very powerful more than many words written and immediate for many skeptics
I also participated in the EAPC photocontest because I believe that the story in images of what happened is very powerful more than many words written and immediate for many skeptics