A new framework for palliative care in Europe

Palliative care offers important potential in improving the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness. The EU-funded EURO IMPACT (European Intersectorial and Multi-disciplinary Palliative Care Research Training) developed an educational and research training framework for palliative care researchers in Europe to help researchers deliver high quality research and advance the field. It trained an international pool of researchers to monitor the quality of palliative care and identify tools to improve it.

More specifically, research fellows were trained within a European network of centres of excellence in palliative care. They were enrolled in several structured training courses and newly developed network wide trainings (such as multidisciplinary collaboration, media training, societal dissemination, grant writing and ethics). This also involved 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, the project team also developed a common set of learning objectives for PhD training in palliative care.

The research was framed within three research programmes addressing the state of the art of palliative care in Europe for cancer and non-cancer patients (e.g. elderly people with dementia). It also featured a 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-related tools to identify areas for improvement in palliative and end-of-life care delivery.

The project also outlined new tools for better outcome assessment in palliative care. It articulated important policy recommendations for the integration of palliative care in mainstream health and social care.

The project consortium has consequently developed a set of policy recommendations for policy, practice and research which are integrated in the 2014 European Declaration on Palliative Care, launched at the closing conference on 15 October 2014 in Brussels. EURO IMPACT has also published the book “Palliative care for older people: a public health perspective that demonstrates the added value of palliative care. The book outlines the current state of worldwide policy work, research and innovations, concluding with advice for policy- and decision-makers to improve access to and quality of palliative care for older people. The project’s results and the book will surely help prepare Europe for a burgeoning elderly population.