Asia and Pacific Pacific Region Hospice Network Meeting and Forum
February 23, 1997
St. Luke's College of Nursing
Tokyo, Japan
It. is a great opportunity for me to share with you ideas about involving the community in palliative care coming from a country where palliative care is still in its infancy and where resources for palliative care is still sorely lacking but before I proceed I would like to congratulate and thank the organizers of this conference and of this forum especially the Life Planning Center for organizing an Asian Pacific Hospice Network carrying noble objectives of sharing and supporting each other in hospice work.
I would like to put. forward a thought that palliative care in its fullest sense will be more successful if the people in the comunity where the patients are, are allowed to participate.
Let us take a look at the the different communities oft hospice/palliative program. The CORE TEAM community is composed of the core team members that is described as multi-/inter-/transmultidisciplinary in nature. Hospice programs have experienced the pains in achieving an ideal team working welt together. A lot of us who are still young in this arena has probably not achieved the "ideal team" yet. It takes a lot of work to get this community to move as one for the patient and his family.
The CORE TEAM-REFERRAL GROUP community brings a hospice program to a more challenging task of creating an environment of cooperation of individuals of varying backgrounds, personalities and idiosycrancies as they come from different specialties/subspecialties and disciplines. I-low often do we find ourselves patiently clarifying what we are doing in hospice and what we need to do, why we can not accept a referral, why the patient needs to be seen and examined again, why the patient is better off than in the hospital.
The TEAM-FAMILY community awakens soft and vulnerable spots in us as we try to journey with them during their weak moments of denial, inacceptance, loneliness, pain, confusion, insecurity, indecision, isolation and miscommunication. Yet, the challenge of encouraging family members to be involved and take active part in the care of the patient without suffocating him and instead allow him to have control and dignity to his last days. faces us everytime we meet with the patient. and their loved ones.
The CORE TEAM-VOLUNTEERS community is something to be awed about. Hospice/palliative programs always have a strong presence of volunteer s. In fact, hospice began because of dedicated volunteers and it continues to serve patients and their families through their perseverance and unrequited spirits. Hospice programs have varying degrees of volunteer involvement and each one of us here working in a hospice organization has our own story to tell and we can in fact tell each other how voluntarism has achieved a high level of success. We have yet to find a hospice program that does not have any volunteer in its organization.
