IAPCON Insights Apply to India’s Entire PC Community

By Alison Ramsey
Pallinews Editor

The 33rd Indian Association for Palliative Care Conference (IAPCON) continued its long tradition as a treasure trove of new and valuable insights for participants. Conferences are an ideal vehicle for educating the dozens or even hundreds of people who attend and return home with new knowledge and the enthusiasm to share it. You can hear this enthusiasm in reports by the 11 IAHPC Scholars who attended.

Insights spanning the healthcare community

“There is a growing role for palliative care in noncancer and acute care settings,” said Aby John Thampi, a second-year resident at Christian Medical College Vellore. “One of the important insights was the expanding integration of palliative care into hematology, intensive care, and chronic non-malignant illnesses.”

He noted that there exists a “shift towards goal-concordant care and avoidance of non-beneficial interventions… [with] significant focus on recognizing medical futility, facilitating goals-of-care discussions, and preventing unnecessary aggressive treatments, thereby promoting more meaningful and patient-centred care.”

There is an emerging focus on the well-being of healthcare professionals, including recognition of clinician burnout, building resilience, and enhancing team-based support. Gowthami Palnati, technical director of community health at Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), said that the conference reinforced the concept that palliative care spans hospital, hospice, and home. It is not the responsibility of a single specialty or setting.”

He added that a session he attended discussed the “need to use different vocabulary for different stakeholders to make palliative care more appealing to them.”

Knowledge leading to action

SVYM will incorporate knowledge from a nephrology session. “I plan to enhance availability of drugs required for kidney supportive care, such as Gabapentin, to manage refractory symptoms seen in end-stage kidney disease, where dialysis is futile,” said Palnati.

Khusbu Singh, assistant professor, Institute of Medical Sciences & SUM Hospital, plans to research the role of TENS in palliative care after learning of its use in early nasal-gastrointestinal tube removal.

David Davey, social worker & project head of expressive and therapeutic activities at Golden Butterflies Children’s Palliative Care Foundation, plans to incorporate elements of narrative expression, memory-building activities, and structured emotional support for his young patients and their families.

Shadhikha Kuppusamy, a junior resident at Christian Medical College Vellore, pledged to advocate for curricular improvements, such as introducing basic point-of-care ultrasound to improve bedside assessment, strengthening education on psychosocial issues, such as existential distress, and expanding case-based teaching on symptom management, including opioid conversion, cachexia, complex cancer pain, etc.

Sunanda Sethi, a post-doctoral fellow in pain medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bathinda, was delighted to acquire a booklet that gives guidance on safe dosages for analgesia.

Gaps provide a roadmap

Kuppusamy summed up India’s significant palliative care needs: more care in rural and resource-limited settings, better integration and awareness (among the public and healthcare providers), stronger national policies and integration into primary healthcare, better access to opioids for pain relief, and expansion of services generally.

Attendees of this conference are now important advocates in tackling the issues, one patient or student or healthcare provider at a time.

Scholars’ posters & oral presentations

• Multidimensional Mapping of Caregiver’s Burden in a Standalone Palliative Care Center in Odisha, India (Amarabati Amarabati) 
• Brushstrokes of Hope: Empowering Children in Palliative Care through Art. A Psychosocial Impact Study (David Davey)
• Care and Implementation Gaps in the National Programme for Palliative Care: An Evaluation of System Readiness and Community Need at the Primary Health Care Level (Gowthami Palnati)
• Colours of Courage: Art, Identity, and Legacy in Paediatric Palliative Care (Sunanda Sethi)
• Connecting Oncology Patients to Meaningful Palliative Support Services (COMPASS) (Sunanda Sethi)
• Understanding Symptom Burden in Severe Interstitial Lung Diseases: A Prospective Observational Study (Aby John Thampi)
• Early Palliative Care in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: A Case Report (Shadhikha Kuppusamy)
• TK (Thilafavathi Elumalai)

More photos of Scholars at the conference