The 10th Asian Pacific Hospice Conference was in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2013. It was a great opportunity to keep up-to-date in palliative care topics and a good place for sharing experiences. I made new connections from other countries with similar problems developing palliative care. We hope to help each other in the future, promoting palliative care in our countries. Planning for common research projects was another decision that we made. Some of the lectures in this conference were highly encouraging for research in palliative care.
In the conference, some lectures were about difficult and common ethical issues. As a palliative medicine specialist that visits a lot of patients in their terminal phase these ethical concerns are a real part of my daily work. I also understood that the best way to promote palliative care in a society is to teach junior physicians, nursing staff and also the general population.
I started my career in 2006. I’m working in the largest cancer center in Tehran with a population of 17,000,000. Cancer incidence in my country is about 100,000 new cases annually and more than 40,000 cancer deaths per year. I’ve tried hard to introduce palliative care to all physicians with different specialties (particularly oncologists) by participating in national congresses and giving lectures. I run a palliative medicine clinic and also manage an acute care center for cancer patients with severe physical symptoms. With the rate of cancer in my country, even if I worked 24 hours a day, I would not be able to meet the needs of all these patents so it is critical that other physicians and health workers become interested, knowledgeable and join the field.
The barriers to promoting palliative care are like those found in other countries and after 7 years I believe that the best way to overcome them is to teach palliative care to all health care professionals. “It should be the goal of everyone”. Participating in conferences such as the Asia Pacific Hospice Conference taught me that only by integrating palliative care into our national health care system will the promotion of quality of life of patients be possible.
I am very grateful with IAHPC for enabling me to attend this conference.
Mamak Tahmasebi, MD
Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Tehran, Iran
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to IAHPC for providing me a traveling scholarship to attend the “Medical Intensive Course” (Nov 17 to Nov 28) in Victoria BC, Canada. Without this funding, it would have been impossible for me to attend. The course “Medicare care of Dying” was very useful for me. The course was so intensive and covered all aspects of palliative care. I also benefited from the teaching style which I hope to implement in the B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Bharatpur, Nepal (BPKMCH). This was a very important opportunity in my career.
In addition to the course, I had the opportunity to visit Victoria Hospice. This visit with our twinning partner had the aims to foster an in-depth knowledge of the care of dying people, strengthen the twinning program and develop social network collaboration. The visit was very useful as it allowed an exchange of ideas between the two hospices and supports the palliative care unit, BPKMCH.
In Victoria Hospice, I had opportunities to acquire additional knowledge and new skills which can be applied in future endeavors. I was exposed to a multidisciplinary team and observed various activities such as nurses working in an inpatient palliative care unit, a family conference, a palliative response team (PRT) that visited a patient at home, and the counseling of a family member by social workers.
Attending the meeting with community nurses was a new experience for me. I was also impressed with the use of Victoria’s palliative performance scale (PPS) to assess the functional level of patients and is very useful in the development of a plan of management for palliative care patients.
In my visit, I also learned about how the social worker/ counselor work in palliative care, which gave me ideas on the role of a team social worker in my country. As a hospice manager in BPKMCH, it is my duty to plan all the activities of the hospice unit. We recently hired a social worker who has just completed training in Hyderabad, India. We did not have a social worker/ counselor in the past. So, now I have several ideas about the many roles of a social worker in the hospice which I will implement after my return.
I also had the opportunity to present my paper on “Palliative Care in Nepal” to the Victoria Hospice team. The presentation was very informative as it included activities and challenges of palliative care in Nepal. The Executive Director of Victoria Hospice Society, the Medical Director and all the multidisciplinary team members of Victoria Hospice were moved by my presentation. They were grateful that the support that Victoria Hospice provides us produces change in palliative care within BPKMCH Hospice in Nepal.
The presentation was also useful because the sharing of differences in our culture provided a learning opportunity for both hospice teams.
I enjoyed traveling the beautiful city of Victoria and the Christmas lights. I am very grateful for the wonderful opportunities provided by the Victoria Hospice Society, the twinning committee members and all of the staff for this warm and memorable experience. What I learned in Canada will be shared at every opportunity with my colleagues in both our in-service and educational programs.
Once again, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the IAHPC for this great opportunity. I strongly believe that this scholarship has provided insights and learning experiences that I might not have otherwise obtained.
Usha Thapa
Nursing Supervisor
B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital
Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal
Previous Page | News Index | Next Page
This newsletter, including (but not limited to) all written material, images, photos are protected under international copyright laws and are property of the IAHPC. You may share the IAHPC newsletter preserving the original design, the IAHPC logo, and the link to the IAHPC website, but you are not allowed to reproduce, modify, or republish any material without prior written permission from the IAHPC.