Palliative Care Team News 2019
In the tenth year of our efforts to help the Can Tho medical community develop palliative care services the Palliative Care Team had a remarkably successful year!
Scenes from Various Trips
- In our teaching of medical students and rural doctors returning to Can Tho for continuing medical education we were joined by Dr. Thu, a engaging oncologist from Da Nang. Through her translations of our didactic and case studies she was able to provide a much needed cultural context to our power points. She also was able to point out the present constraints of the Vietnamese health care system that would have to be overcome to effectively integrate palliative care services on a large scale.
- The almost total lack of nurses trained and available to make home visits for chronically ill and terminal patients in the Mekong Region was a problem we have wanted to address for years. We've seen terminal patients at their homes and their families need for instruction about how to optimally care for them was strikingly apparent. This year, with adequate funding, our team was able to hire two Vietnamese nurses with extensive backgrounds in training nurses how to teach families about palliative home care. They have begun to develop the curriculum for a program to train graduate and student nurses about teaching families how to care for their ailing family members. Two of the Can Tho hospitals have enthusiastically joined this effort and we hope to see the training program begin this year. This effort is in accord with the Vietnamese Ministry of Health's directive that palliative care's role be expanded throughout the country.
- We met with a group of palliative care clinicians from the UW who have expressed an interest in joining our efforts in Can Tho. Their involvement would give a greater depth and breadth to our work. Communications with this group are ongoing.
Cyrus Appell, Team Lead
