New society to promote implementation of palliative care

By Rand Dalgamouni

AMMAN - The Jordanian Palliative Care and Pain Management Society opened on Wednesday with a mission to provide medical, psychological and social care to terminal patients and those with life-threatening illnesses and their families.

Deputizing for HRH Princess Dina Mired, Minister of Health Mahmoud Sheyyab inaugurated the society, which seeks to promote the implementation of palliative care in the Kingdom and cooperate with doctors and public and private medical institutions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life for patients and their families as they go through life-threatening illnesses.

Palliative care seeks to prevent and relieve suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment, as well as treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems, according to the WHO.

Mohammad Bushnaq, the society’s president, said a wider implementation of palliative care will change the way society treats terminal patients.

“Society usually coerces terminal patients into following a certain lifestyle, but palliative care is about making patients comfortable and providing them with all their needs,” he said.

The palliative care expert and medical doctor noted that his specialty calls for providing the necessary home treatment for terminal patients away from hospitals, and removing all extra medication that complicates patients’ lives.

“Our job as doctors is not simply providing these patients with medicine; we have to take their pain and suffering into account,” Bushnaq said at the opening ceremony.

“Is it the patient’s duty to stay in hospital and go through extra unnecessary medication instead of spending the last days he has left at home with his family and friends?” he asked.

Bushnaq explained that palliative care restores patients’ self-esteem after the initial shock of being diagnosed with a terminal illness, adding that it also reduces costs for hospitals and patients.

During the ceremony, the society’s vice president, Ahmad Khatib, announced that the University of Jordan’s nursing faculty plans to introduce a master’s program in palliative care in the next academic year, citing the faculty’s dean Professor Inaam Khalaf.

The society acknowledged the efforts of pioneers in the field, including Al Malath Foundation, the National Palliative Care Committee, and the palliative care departments at King Hussein Cancer Center and King Hussein Medical City.

Despite the efforts of these entities, Bushnaq said more than 90 per cent of Jordanian patients who need this type of medical care are not receiving it.

“Terminal patients look for compassion before anything else, and palliative care is all about that,” he said.

6 January 2011

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/?news=33219.