2015; Volume 16, No 3, March
Resources
IAHPC’s Global Directory of Palliative Care Services and Organizations
Julia Libreros, Coordinator of the Global Directory
Among the many resources on the IAHPC website is our updated and easy-to-navigate directory of palliative care services across the world. The free online directory now includes over one thousand for palliative care services and organizations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania.
And it’s all down to team effort. Julia Libreros, the coordinator of the directory, has been working hard with colleagues since last November to populate the directory by contacting each one of the listings to verify and update the information and regularly uploading information. Thanks to everyone’s hard work we now have more than one thousand listings in the global directory. The listings include name, type of service, address, city, phone numbers, details of contact person and website (if available). We believe that this is a really useful tool for professional networking purposes and to raise awareness of the existence of hospice and palliative care services. Please visit the directory and check that your own institution/program or association is listed and share the link with colleagues to encourage them to contribute information.
Add your service to the directory, or please email Julia in case of any difficulties.
With your help, we can try to make this a really comprehensive global directory as a service to the palliative care community.
FREE open access lecture to download – Symptom Burden and Distress in Patients with HIV in Africa
Dr John Weru
Download the latest open access lecture free on the Palliative Care Network (PCN) website. This lecture is given by Dr. John Weru, the first Palliative Medicine Specialist in Kenya, based in Nairobi. He has been engaged in the field of palliative care for over 12 years. Download the lecture free on the Palliative Care Network (PCN) website.
Read more about the Palliative Care Network.
PCN aims to alleviate patient suffering by providing open access educational materials for professionals from all disciplines of palliative care on a global scale. Our vision is to provide Palliative Care for Everyone, Everywhere.
Meaning-Centered Group Psychotherapy for Advanced Cancer Patients
The results of a National Cancer Institute RO1-funded Randomized Controlled Trial of Meaning-Centered Group Psychotherapy for Advanced Cancer Patients have been published as an early release article by the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The research demonstrates broad clinical benefit in the areas of emotional and spiritual wellbeing and quality of life.
Meaning-Centered Group Psychotherapy: An Effective Intervention for Improving Psychological Well-Being in Patients With Advanced Cancer, William Breitbart, Barry Rosenfeld, Hayley Pessin, Allison Applebaum, Julia Kulikowski, and Wendy G. Lichtenthal. Published online before print February 2, 2015, doi: 10.1200/JCO.2014.57.2198.
Thanks to Dr William Breitbart, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, for alerting us to this publication.
Dawn of a new era – or a false dawn?
Writing in the EAPC online blog, Richard A Powell explains why it’s vital to include palliative care in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. Together with several other recognized palliative care experts, he has contributed to a commentary published in the February edition of The Lancet Oncology. 1 The paper, acknowledging the relative absence of palliative care from the global health dialogue, urges that the discipline should be incorporated into the SDG agenda.
1. Powell RA, Mwangi-Powell FN, Radbruch L, Yamey G, Krakauer EL, Spence D, Ali Z, Baxter S, De Lima L, Xhixha A, Rajagopal MR, Knaul F. Putting palliative care on the global health agenda. Lancet Oncol 2015 Feb;1 6 (2):131-133. (You can download the article free of charge but you will need to login or take out a free registration).