2017; Volume 18, No 2, February
Message from the Chair and Executive Director
Dear readers,
At IAHPC we are extremely grateful to our members for their support. A few weeks ago, we implemented a Members’ Satisfaction survey to find out how we can improve members’ satisfaction. Our objective is to identify:
- the benefits that our members value the most,
- the benefits that might need improvement, and
- how the IAHPC can increase your satisfaction level with our association.
If you are currently an IAHPC member, please take a moment to reply to this survey – your opinion is very important to us. The survey will take less than four minutes to complete and it will be extremely useful to IAHPC, and eventually to all our members. To access the survey, please click on this link.
IAHPC resources
In this month’s message we also want to highlight two great resources that we offer on our website: these are both online publications, free to all and applicable in all settings. And although they were published several years ago, they are still timely and applicable in all settings. They are:
Getting Started – Guidelines and Suggestions for those Starting a Hospice/Palliative Care Service (2nd edition)by Derek Doyle. Getting Started answers all the most commonly asked questions. It stresses what not to do, as much as what to do. It is free of jargon and is honest about the challenge that faces those ‘getting started’. Download a copy here.
IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care (3rd edition) by Derek Doyle and Roger Woodruff. The IAHPC is conscious of the fact that in many countries palliative care textbooks and practice manuals are expensive or difficult to obtain. With this in mind, the authors updated the 3rd edition of the IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care which is offered for free to the global palliative care community. The IAHPC offers the Manual in the hope that doctors and nurses worldwide will find the information in it helpful, will feel free to download whatever parts of it they want, and will make its existence known to colleagues who are also seeking to improve their skills so as to offer better care to their terminally ill patients. The Manual is available here.
The IAHPC hopes that these publications, alongside all the other resources available, will help to bring palliative care to the thousands of people who still suffer at the end of life.
January 15 marked the deadline for the applications for IAHPC Traveling Scholarships to the 15th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care. We have funds for 20 scholarships and received 54 applications, so selecting the grantees will be a difficult task. The grantees will be announced next month – many thanks to all those who participated for their enthusiasm!
Until next month,
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
Lukas Radbruch, MD
Chair, Board of Directors