Creating a framework for palliative care

The project 'European intersectorial and multi-disciplinary palliative care research training' (EURO IMPACT) is striving to train an international pool of researchers to monitor the quality of palliative care and identify tools to improve it. Research fellows are being trained within a European network of centres of excellence in palliative care. They have been enrolled in several structured training courses, newly developed network wide trainings (such as multidisciplinary collaboration, media training, societal dissemination, grant writing and ethics) and on-the-job training for their individual research projects in at least two of the partnering institutes. Working with the European Association of Palliative Care, a common set of learning objectives for PhD training in palliative care is being developed in the consortium.

The research projects are framed in three research programmes addressing the state of the art of palliative care in Europe, for cancer and noncancer patients, and one dissemination programme aimed to influence policy and practice in palliative care. One programme involved reviewing individual country reports on the development of palliative care and updating reports from resource-poor countries. Two programmes on monitoring and improving palliative care used literature reviews and several population-based and population-level tools to identify areas for improvement in palliative and end-of-life care delivery in Europe. Throughout different settings where people are currently dying, care processes such as communication and information, advance care planning, involvement of family, access to specialist palliative care, care delivered according to patient preferences, as well as outcome assessment and management can be improved considerably. These findings are true for cancer patients but also in particular for older people and people suffering from noncancer illnesses such as people with dementia.

A final dissemination programme was aimed at improving palliative care practices It will provide tools for better outcomes assessment in palliative care, and has produced important policy recommendations for the integration of palliative care in mainstream health and social care and related policies in Europe. Based on contributions from authors all over the world, EURO IMPACT will publish the book “Palliative care for older people: a public health perspective” in 2015. This book uses a public health perspective as the ageing of our society poses challenges to social and health care structures in many countries. This book demonstrates the added value of palliative care, outlines the current state of worldwide policy work, research and innovations and concludes with advice for policy- and decision-makers to improve access to and quality of palliative care for older people.