ATLANTES and the CODE-YAA@PC-EDU project promote a summer school to train European professionals in Education in Palliative Care

To revolutionize Education, internship and policy in palliative care in Europe. With this goal in mind, the first summer school has been developed by the Global Observatory on Palliative Care ATLANTES of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra and the project CODE-YAA@PC-EDU (COllaboratively DEveloped culturallY Appropriate and inclusive Assessment tool for Palliative Care EDUcation).

Under the degree scroll Transforming Education in Palliative Care, the course brought together 40 professionals, many of them young, from countries such as Albania, Germany, Armenia, Spain, Israel, Latvia, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Turkey, at the University of Navarra Museum. Although most of them work in medicine or nursing, psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists, among other disciplines, also attended.

Vilma Tripodoro, director of the course and ATLANTES researcher, explains that the initiative seeks to "encourage networking between researchers, teachers and clinicians, mostly young people, to generate new leaders in Europe in palliative careEducation . To achieve this, for five days they received training in "three essential pillars to sustain Education in palliative care in Europe: leadership, ethics and mentoring". In this sense, the researcher emphasizes that " Education in this field is lacking and there is an urgent need to improve it, especially in the Degree programs of study . It is essential to train leaders who can improve this gap, based on ethical and clinical competencies".

Training the palliative vision

The dynamics of the course revolved around 20 workshops, divided into work groups, in which professionals had the opportunity to share experiences and opinions. One of the participants was the psychologist Eva Víbora, a researcher at the Cudeca Foundation in Malaga, who emphasized "the moments of exchange of ideas with people who do something similar to you in another context and other cultures. You can take away a lot of information to continue improving". She also stresses that "end-of-life training and communication in palliative care is fundamental for all those involved in the healthcare field" and considers it essential to train "the palliative vision and the holistic point of view".

For the nurse Manuel Vilas, researcher and professor at the Catholic University of Portugal, it has result "a fantastic week, with practical sessions where we can apply the research". He also highlights its transversal nature and the relationships with the group of participants, a door to "get to know the realities of other countries". Along these lines, Julija Cirule-Galuza, director of the Pediatric Palliative Care team at the Liepaja Regional Hospital in Latvia, points out that the course "has been an opportunity to learn how palliative care works in different countries, identify common problems and see how people find solutions to deal with them". She also explains that the course has result "very useful and interesting, both as a participant and also in my role as organizer of the palliative care summer school in my country. I take away with me an experience that I will try to apply to organize something similar with our students.