Directors of the UIC Barcelona WeCare Chair call for palliative care be recognised as a specialty

10/10/2022

Directors of the UIC Barcelona WeCare Chair call for palliative care be recognised as a specialty

The directors have done this on the occasion of World Palliative Care Day and have called for recognition as a specialty to ensure that caregivers are sufficiently trained and retrained to provide quality care

Dr Cristina Monforte and Dr Joaquim Julià, directors of the WeCare Chair, lamented that this lack of recognition means that the inclusion of palliative care courses in undergraduate studies as well as access to more specific research funding is limited.

In this line, Julià explained that “other nearby countries have developed a palliative care specialty or the so-called specific training areas or sub-specialties that are studied once the specialty has been obtained.” In Spain, “only 10% of universities incorporate palliative care courses in their faculties of medicine.

The directors believe that one of the main problems in palliative care is “inequality” between autonomous communities, “both in the deployment of teams and in the existence of palliative care development programmes.” Despite these difficulties, significant advances have been made in recent years, as cancer patients are now treated at earlier stages of their disease with better screening of their palliative care needs. In addition, this model of care has been extended to other patient profiles, such as those affected by COPD, heart failure, or degenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Monforte and Julià pointed out that 60% of patients admitted to acute care need palliative care, which “in most cases, the resources allocated are still inadequate”. In the residential care environment, “palliative care needs are up to 90% of users and usually there are no specific devices or equipment.”

The directors of the WeCare Chair commented that it is estimated that about 1.5% of the population in Spain needs palliative care, which is more than 700,000 people. Given these figures, specialists have called on governments to allocate more resources to palliative care, because the prevalence of the population with this type of need will continue to increase in the coming years due to the progressive aging and chronification of previously fatal diseases.

In this context, in June 2022, Cuides UIC Barcelona, the third university clinic of UIC Barcelona, opened its doors with the main objective of offering comprehensive and palliative care to patients with advanced diseases, and also to support them, their families and caregivers.

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