The European Union COST-Action CA22127 “Collaboratively developed, culturally appropriate and inclusive assessment tool for palliative care education” project working group meeting took place in Yerevan.
Yerevan State Medical University was presented at the meeting by Artashes Tadevosyan, Head of the Department of Public Health and Healthcare Organization, and Ashot Gyulbudaghyan, lecturer of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Therapy.
Welcoming the participants of the two-day meeting, Artashes Tadevosyan noted that it was a great honor for the medical university to contribute to the construction of such a large network of specialists. He highlighted the importance of our country’s participation in the program, especially in terms of the scale of the participating countries: about 28 countries, and not only European ones, there are also participants from Argentina, India and Venezuela.
The program, coordinated by the Paracelsius Medical University of Salzburg, was launched in September 2023 and will last for 4 years, ending in September 2027.
Head of the Program Piret Paal, Palliative care Professor, Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria; emphasized that it’s a great honor for her to lead this kind of a project. “Because it really has a global outreach: we network people, we help them to find networks so that they can talk to people with similar aspirations. Together we are stronger – that’s our motto.
The aim of this project is to come up with quality criteria for palliative care education, and these quality criteria is to help regions and countries, as well as globally decision-makers to make decisions about what kind of steps they need to make at their country because countries are at different levels, so that they can significantly improve accessibility to palliative care. I am not talking only about specialist palliative care which is provided in hospices and palliative care units, but we really focus on this kind of introducing palliative care philosophy to all healthcare professionals so that besides of healing people they also have an eye when a person needs comprehensive care which is either social or spiritual or emotional support. So that the entire focus of healthcare is more on healing, not only treatment and technology. We really think that the education and support we have from WHO for over 40 years, they say that lack of education is one of the reasons why people do not get timely access to palliative care”, – Piret Paal noted adding that the meeting in Armenia would also be used as an opportunity to educate over palliative care.
According to Professor Gil Goldzweig from Israel, the leader of the research working group, the aim of the process of brainstorming was to refine quality indicators for palliative care education. “We are going to split into separate groups, and each group will try to come up with a set of indicators, combine everything together and then send it as a survey to people who are working in palliative care all over the world”, he assured.
Collaboration with Armenia and YSMU, as Professor put it, started about a year ago. “A year ago, we put this into motion. There is friendly beginning and very tight collaboration. Armenia is participating in each of our working groups – in information exchange, trying to think about palliative care in terms of diversity, multicultural perspectives which may be different for a Jewish person from Israel like myself and for a Christian person from Armenia. So, we can share what is similar and what is different in terms of how we deal with patients. We share views, we share ideas, hopefully, we will share some joint research, like a Pan-European survey about what is going in palliative care education”, he concluded.
The working meeting continued on June 28, where further actions were outlined, and the necessary measures were planned.
