EFPC Working Group on Primary Care and Palliative Care

The EFPC Working Group on Primary Care and Palliative Care has the objective to seek more integration and create more attention of Primary Care professionals for Palliative Care. The Working Group acted in the previous years in the framework of the FP7 project PACE managed by the Free University of Brussels.

New initiatives are now on its’ way lead by Advisory Board member Liga Kozlovska facilitated via the PIE platform. You are most welcome to join the discussion and to develop a new paper which describes the current state of the art and the needed policy changes. Please send the EFPC secretariat a message if you are interested to join this Working Group.

Workshops in 2015 has been organised at the AGP/FM SEE conference in Ljubljana and the EFPC Amsterdam conference.

A Position Paper on Palliative Care within Primary Care has been prepared and was published in Primary Health Care research & Development under the title: Palliative care in primary care: European Forum for Primary Care position paper. The authors were Danica Rotar Pavlič, Diederik Aarendonk, Johan Wens, José Augusto Rodrigues Simões, Marie Lynch and Scott Murray.

Abstract:

Aim:
The aim of this position paper is to assist primary health care (PHC) providers, policymakers, and researchers by discussing the current context in which palliative health care functions within PHC in Europe. The position paper gives examples for improvements to palliative care models from studies and international discussions at the European Forum for Primary Care (EFPC) workshops and conferences.

Background:
Palliative care is a holistic approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with terminal illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and diligent assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, whether physical, psychosocial, or spiritual. Unfortunately, some Europeans, unless they have cancer, still do not have access to generalist or specialist palliative care.

Methods:
A draft of this position paper was distributed electronically through the EFPC network in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Active collaboration with the representatives of the International Primary Palliative Care Network was established from the very beginning and more recently with the EAPC Primary Care Reference Group. Barriers, opportunities, and examples of good and bad practices were discussed at workshops focusing on palliative care at the international conferences of Southeastern European countries in Ljubljana (2015) and Budva (2017), at regular conferences in Amsterdam (2015) and Riga (2016), at the WONCA Europe conferences in Istanbul (2015), Copenhagen (2016), and Prague (2017), and at the EAPC conference in Madrid (2017).

Findings:
There is great diversity in the extent and type of palliative care provided in primary care by European countries. Primary care teams (PCTs) are well placed to encourage timely palliative care. We collected examples from different countries. We found numerous barriers influencing PCTs in preparing care plans with patients. We identified many facilitators to improve the organization of palliative care.

Please send the EFPC secretariat a message if you are interested to join this Working Group.