An international collaboration has led to the development of a new palliative care training tool aimed at improving quality and equitable access.
Health systems across the globe are recognizing a growing need to boost the supply of providers able to care for a swelling, aging population of serious and terminally ill patients. Rising demand was among the driving forces behind the newly unveiled COllaboratively DEveloped culturalY Appropriate and inclusive Assessment tool for Palliative Care Education (CODE-YAA@PC-EDU).
The palliative care education tool was developed in concert by the Council of Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations. The organizations joined forces to design a sustainable training model that could build up the palliative workforce. The project is supported in part by the research network European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST).
“The CODE-YAA@PC-EDU COST Action will set quality indicators to establish a gold standard for high-quality education and training in palliative care,” the organizations stated in a COST announcement. “[The tool] aims to measure, explore and promote access to palliative care education and training. The CODE-YAA indicators will have a long-lasting impact in Europe and beyond.”
The COST Action project will include a network of 31 countries using the new palliative care education tool. All health systems should be focusing on the integration and boost of palliative care education, according to the organization.
Serious health-related suffering is projected to crease by 183% globally among seniors 70 and older by 2060, a trend driven by rises in mortality rates among cancer patients and individuals with dementia conditions, according to a 2019 study published in The Lancet Global Health.
Increasingly the supply of trained palliative care professionals could help reduce health disparities among the world’s sickest and most vulnerable populations, COST indicated. Health inequities have proliferated worldwide when it comes to culturally appropriate care, with health care training among the largest levers to pull toward improvement, the organization stated.
“Enabling access to high-quality palliative care education guarantees societies worldwide that people can live better lives until their death,” Piret Paal, chair of CODE-YAA@PC-EDU, said in a Medical Xpress report. Paal is a behavior researcher and professor in palliative care, serving as head of the Institute for Palliative Care in Austria.
Palliative professionals face an array of diverse cultural and ethical decisions as they navigate care delivery. The new training tool is designed to strengthen future clinicians’ ability to understand patient priorities and deliver goal-concordant care. The tool includes guidelines on interdisciplinary palliative care delivery across various geographical areas, age groups and gender-inclusive approaches.
Among the tool’s potential impacts is to strengthen care coordination across the continuum and reduce common barriers to access and quality outcomes. The training is focused on increasing palliative care awareness and engagement with providers upstream, focusing mainly on those in the primary health care space.
“CODE-YAA@PC-EDU will coordinate joint efforts to seek ways to improve palliative care education and accelerate knowledge transfer into ethically sound practices that can be shared across Europe to reduce the societal and economic burden and harmful experiences caused by people experiencing unnecessary health-related suffering,” COST reported in the announcement.