First training courses for healthcare professionals in palliative care of the Pallium project get underway
This project, co-financed and organized by the University of Navarra and the Dignia Foundation, plans to train more than 200 non-specialist palliative care professionals in Alava, Valladolid, Pamplona, Madrid, Malaga and Zaragoza in one year.
FotoManuelCastells/Palliative care at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra
It has been one year since the University of Navarra and the Dignia Foundation signed an agreement to promote a project to train health professionals in palliative care in Spain. The agreement allows the pioneering Pallium program, which has been developed in Canada since 2000, to be adapted to the Spanish context. During this year, its organizers have adapted four courses - the palliative approach in primary care, pneumology, nephrology and oncology - and learning materials such as educational videos, and have trained more than 30 interprofessional trainers, known as facilitators. In addition, they have established collaborations with health services of several Autonomous Communities and several medical societies.
The first four LEAPs (in Spanish, Lo Esencial en el Abordaje Paliativo) are from primary care, pneumology, nephrology and oncology. The program starts tomorrow, June 11, in Vitoria where a total of 15 primary care physicians will be trained in palliative care for 16 hours by Dr. Alberto Meléndez, nurse Miren Iosune Martínez, Dr. Marcos Lama Gay, Dr. Iñaki Saralegui and Dr. María José Almaraz.
"The LEAP for primary care will continue in September in the cities of Valladolid, Pamplona, Malaga and Zaragoza and the LEAP for renal care will start its first edition in Madrid on the same dates", explains Dr. José Luis Pereira, palliative physician coordinator of this program and researcher of the Global Observatory of Palliative Care ATLANTES of the Institute of Culture and Society. Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, where he is also a professor at the School of Medicine. "We want to bring this training to all of Spain. All doctors, nurses and other health professionals who care for patients with advanced illnesses should have basic knowledge and skills in palliative care because sometimes they do not reach the specific palliative units. This basic knowledge enables them to apply what we call the 'palliative approach,'" he adds.
status of Palliative Care in Spain: still lagging behind
Spain has experienced B in the implementation of palliative care services in recent years, but continues to lag behind European countries that are leaders in this field. This is revealed in the Atlas of Palliative Care in Europe 2025a study prepared by the ATLANTES Global Observatory of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra in partnership with the European association for Palliative Care(EAPC).
According to the report, Spain has substantially increased the issue of specialized teams, with a total of 450, which means 0.96 services per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the 0.6 recorded in the previous analysis, carried out in 2019. These data place our country in 25th place out of the 53 analyzed, right in the average of the continent, but still far from States with greater resources, such as Austria, Switzerland or Sweden, which have more than 2 specific teams per 100,000 inhabitants, the standard recommended by the Spanish Society of Palliative Care(SECPAL).
The progress revealed by the European Atlas therefore offers grounds for hope, although it is accompanied by an urgent challenge: to address the territorial inequalities observed in Spain. In the coming months these will be detailed in the first report of the Observatory of Palliative Care in Spain, a project currently being developed by SECPAL with the support of the Dignia Foundation.
