A study has identified differences in access to palliative care training in Europe
Data from 43 countries reveals training inequalities in an area that is key for aging populations with an increasing prevalence of diseases that have prolonged advanced stages
A study of data from 43 countries in the World Health Organization's European Region has revealed that medical students have unequal access to training in palliative care. The study, led by researchers from the ATLANTES Program at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, has been published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
To assess the status of the discipline's availability, the researchers propose a scoring system according to three factors: the proportion of medical schools where palliative care is taught; the proportion of medical schools where the subject is mandatory; and the total number of palliative care professors.
According to the research, in 13 of the countries surveyed, palliative care is taught in all medical schools, but it is only mandatory in six of them. In 15 countries, it is only taught in some universities and in 14 there is no specific training designed for this subject. In Israel, Norway, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Austria, Germany and Ireland, palliative care education seems to be the most developed.
The authors conclude that, although palliative care is part of a "substantial number" of medical degree programs in European universities and a "qualified teaching structure" is emerging, there is a wide and evident difference between countries.
In this sense, they suggest that there should be an integration of specific programs in palliative medicine at universities: "An aging population and the increasing prevalence of diseases with long periods of advanced illness, as well as the difficulty in controlling symptoms, supposes, from the perspective of public health and social care, a challenge for which health professionals must be prepared."
The study was conducted with the collaboration of working groups from the Development of Palliative Care and Medical Education project of the European Association for Palliative Care. The authors include Carlos Centeno, José Miguel Carrasco, Eduardo Garralda and Kathrin Woitha, all from the ICS ATLANTES Program at the University of Navarra, as well as Thomas J. Lynch, from the Kimmer Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (USA), Marilène Filbet, from the University Academic Hospital Lyon Sud HCL (France); Frank Elsner, from the Palliative Care Department of the RWTH Aachen University (Germany); John E. Ellershaw, from the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute of the University of Liverpool (UK); and David Clark of the University of Glasgow -Campus Dumfries-(UK).