End of life care

Adding life to days

There is the elderly man who has discharged his wife from the hospital against medical advice and is refusing medications and declining any support. Parents who are dealing with the unexpected death of a child. A young woman who has terminal cancer and is finding it difficult to talk to her children about her condition.
 
The End of Life Care Training Programme concludes where it begins: with discussions of these and other case studies. Participants which include doctors, nurses, caregivers and other professionals working in general hospitals and the community are asked to talk about these cases initially and then again at the end of the programme, when they reflect on how they could develop or improve care in such situations.
 
Funded by the Foundation, the training programme is run by the Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care and is tailored to help medical professionals bridge the difficult gap between acute care and providing holistic care. More than 1,000 frontline healthcare professionals have received training since 2001.
 
Based on the Society's vision of 'adding life to days when days cannot be added to life' the objective of such care is to bring comfort, peace and dignity to those in the last stage of life and to provide support to their families.