María Arantzamendi PHOTO: Courtesy

María Arantzamendi, professor at School of Nursing at the University of Navarra, attended the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress, held in Stockholm and attended by more than 15,000 experts from different disciplines - physicians, surgeons, oncologists, nurses and radiotherapists - from 116 countries, as speaker guest speaker.

In total, more than 2,000 presentations were made at meeting and some 694 experts attended partnership . Among the invited speakers, María Arantzamendi participated in the special session "End-of-Life. Care in Oncology", where she gave a talk on "Nurses' attitudes towards the care of hospitalized dying patients".

In her discussion paper the professor unveiled part of the results of a regional survey funded by the Government of Navarra that sample how nurses value positively the learning experience involved in caring for patients at the end of their lives. "However," the expert explained, "in this study the nurses perceived the care of these patients as more difficult and demanding".

training for emotional care
The study also revealed that among the most influential factors in the perception of the difficulty involved in caring for patients in the terminal phase is skill for emotional care: "The nurses highlighted this aspect as core topic and considered that it required greater training in this respect".

In this sense, Professor Arantzamendi, director of the Master's Degree in Palliative Care Nursing at the University of Navarra, highlighted the importance of the specific training for the care of terminally ill pati ents: "In fact, the Master's Degree of the School Nursing provides specific training in palliative care and research, as suggested by the national and international strategic plans of development of Palliative Care".