Palliative care education in the Asia Pacific: Challenges and progress towards palliative care development

Abstract

While access to palliative care is recognized internationally as a human right, from a global health perspective, there are many gaps within the professional services that provide palliative care together with corresponding health inequities for people needing to access palliative care. Palliative care development, or the building and expansion of palliative care services, represents a key strategy in addressing those gaps and health inequities. The development of palliative care depends on various factors including healthcare services and their provision of clinical care, as well as education, research and ongoing professional development activities in accordance with guidelines and policies across different countries and regions. As is the case with many regions across the globe, there is a need to further develop and promote access to quality hospice and palliative care in the Asia Pacific – reaching out to work in partnership together with communities and ensuring that their needs are met in a way that is equitable. One of the key components of palliative care development is the education of healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public. A past survey of member countries from the Asia Pacific Hospice Network found that although care services were generally well developed in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, there was a need to strengthen palliative care education for healthcare providers. In this context and following the publication of the second Global Atlas of Palliative Care, the University of Hong Kong together with the Health Promotion Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan and Taipei Medical University, collaborated to host an online symposium with a broad focus on the Transition of Palliative Care Development in the Asia Pacific Region. In May 2021, a virtual gathering of international palliative care experts from the Asia Pacific came together via webinar to discuss, more specifically, palliative care education as an important component of palliative care development in the Asia Pacific Region. After a formal introduction from Prof. Chia-Chin Lin at the University of Hong Kong, expert contributions and interactive discussion with other participants were facilitated by Assoc. Prof. Megan F. Liu. from Taipei Medical University. Experiences of and perspectives on palliative care education were shared by contributors from Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. In Australia, the National Palliative Care Strategy has, since its inception as a policy framework in 2000, delivered significant funding for national projects such as the Palliative Care Curriculum for Undergraduates that has provided an online palliative care education resource for multidisciplinary healthcare students and educators. However, the extent to which its palliative care content is integrated within curricula is largely unknown and likely to be inconsistent across the higher education providers that might choose to implement it. While some universities offer palliative care education as an elective subject within Bachelor of Nursing curricula, most do not offer any discrete unit of study and formal assessment focused on palliative care. Other universities, such as Torrens University Australia, have led the way through collaborative innovation to develop a mandatory, 12week subject on palliative care and life-limiting conditions; the University of the Sunshine Coast hasfollowed a similar path in developing a mandatory 8week course on end-of-life care for nursing students. Undergraduate medical education has evolved and strengthened in its palliative care content over time, and comprehensive postgraduate specialty training options are made available by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine through its Palliative Medicine Advanced Training Curriculum or Clinical Diploma in Palliative Medicine pathway. Award postgraduate studies in palliative care have