Center to Advance Palliative Care

Dear my seniors
As a geriatrician in one of the DHA acute hospitals in Dubai, that admit all adult age groups medical, surgical and trauma. As a geriatrician with multidisciplinary approach experience, I was able to detect easily the need for palliative care (PC) service to fill the gap. I believed that absence of PC service in the hospital was the reason behind the apparent unintended neglect. The hospital adminstration was luckily very responsive to my request to creat an educational program in palliative care to all health care workers including all physicians and nurses regardless of specialty. I found that this is the only valid solution to make awareness, spread information and in the same time helping all to implement the service on clinical ground. I recruited educators from most related specialty so that each will educate his related topic eg anaesthetist for pain and opioids, psychiatrist for depression etc. I have provisionally chosen 11 PC related topics and around 7educators. The program is 2hours per week for 12 weeks. Each trainer is required to implement the gained information clinically on his patients and report his action on the patient's file and on the course log book at the same time. Now we are approximately in the middle of the first cycle (1st 12 weeks). Probably this ecperience may benefit others and in the same time, I like to hear from other experts about their advices and if any of my seniors can help me how to measure the clinical outcome of the program. I'm designing now check lists then KPIs, to be used later on for auditing. thanks reading 16-12-2011.