Palliative Care

The following day was not much easier for any of us emotionally.  We visited the DEAN Foundation, a  palliative care program in the city and we also traveled to their rural center.  DEAN stands for to Dignify and Empower the Ailing and the Needy.  This is the second palliative care center we have visited, last week we went to the RMD Pain and Palliative Care Trust.  My presentation topic has changed and I am now doing it on the Present State of Palliative Care in India.  This is a new field here.  It is relatively new in the US but it is still much smaller here.  Only recently has the Indian Government become involved and it sounds like most of the work is still done by NGOs with some government collaboration.  These NGOs struggle because they do not wish to charge patients, or at least those who cannot afford to pay, but donors prefer to give to a more hopeful cause rather than towards helping people who are already dying.   I was able to interview three physicians who practice palliative care.  Though I know this is far from statistically significant, they told me that it is not a very highly respected specialty and a couple of them have had colleagues try to discourage them from practicing palliative care.  Two of them also work in other specialties and said they could not afford to only practice palliative care.  

In the report I am doing on this I am providing some information on the history of palliative care and the challenges it faces.  I am also going to try to add some perspective by giving an overview of palliative care in the United States.   I was interested in the question of whether boys or men are more likely than women to receive palliative treatment – because they are more likely to receive all other types of life-preserving therapy.  I am still working on this but I don’t think the statistics are available to make any conclusions.   A few of us in our group discussed that we  think that there is an opportunity here for those practicing or learning palliative care in the US who want to do global work.  This organization said they would love to have people come and work with them.  They struggle to keep all but one truly dedicated volunteer and despite their enormous efforts they know millions of people in India could be benefiting from this service if it were more available.  If any Iowa students are especially interested in learning more about this, one of the Winterim courses offered is actually entirely on Pain, Palliative care and Hospice as well. 

WHO Definition of Palliative Care: 

Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.