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Lien Collaborative for Palliative CareTraining in China

Overview

In the 2015 Quality of Death index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, China ranked 71 out of 80 regions. This reflects the country’s lack of a systematic palliative care structure. Since 2015, APHN has held the Mandarin Hospice Summit yearly, where they have collected opinions from prestigious palliative care experts from China. Through this, APHN found out that there was a lack of systematic training in palliative care for healthcare workers nationwide. Moreover, the team learned that the Chinese government has enacted policies promoting the development of palliative care. These policies include the notice in 2017 issued by the Chinese government about palliative care pilots. Furthermore, the Chinese government issued a second circular in response to the policies of the Healthy China 2030 Outline.  As such, APHN decided to develop and introduce systematic training to healthcare workers in China, with a focus on cultivating palliative care trainers. 

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There are three main objectives of this programme

  1. To help participating hospitals build sustainable palliative care services;

  2. To train generalists in palliative care to provide a locally adopted Train-The-Trainer programme;

  3. To nurture palliative care champions for outreach programmes.

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Course Outline

Duration 11 Months

Site Selection

Foundation Course

(6 months online)

Clinical Case Discussion

(6 months online)

Clinical Attachment

(5-days suspended due to Covid outbreak)

Refresher Course

(3-days)

Audit & Summary Report

Post-program Support

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Due to the pandemic, the training programme in China was launched in mid-2021 as an online program. More than 30 volunteer faculty from 5 regions mentored trainee hospitals in palliative care. Participants successfully completed the programme after attending 40 hours of fundamental training, as well as 40 hours of clinical case discussion sessions. The programme ended with a graduation ceremony where three hospitals were selected to share their experiences at the 2022 Mandarin Hospice Summit.

Click the play button to see the graduation clip

Latest Updates

  • Outcome

The programme has successfully trained a total of 102 trainees in mainland China, including

  • 46 doctors

  • 38 nurses

  • 18 social workers

These participants are from 22 hospitals and institutions across 7 provinces and 2 municipalities. This is by far the largest number of participants from a single training batch we have ever had. 

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  • Results

This training in palliative care in China has produced positive results:

  • 13% increase in the number of outpatient services,

  •  3% increase in dedicated beds,

  • 16% increase in weekly outpatient units, and

  • 94% increase in monthly average patients admitted to palliative care units.

Some trainees have taken on leadership roles or provided training to other institutions. The training materials from APHN’s Train-the-Trainer Programme in China have become reference textbooks. 

  • What's next?

Based on the survey results and mentoring notes, we will be developing more in-depth and targeted training programmes to better support palliative care workers in China. There has also been various requests from teaching hospitals in China to run bedside and face-to-face training at the teaching hospitals

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Our Passionate Faculty

A core team of more than 30 experienced palliative care experts from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China as volunteer faculty for the training program.

Gallery

  • Video 

Click the play button to see the graduation clip

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