Only one in 5 people hospitalized following a severe stroke receives a consultation for palliative care, according to a recent study published in the ‘Journal of pain and symptom management’, which reaffirms the importance of treatments aimed at relieving sufferings of patients ‘regardless of their prognosis’ and overcoming the concept of palliative care equals terminal cancer.
“The American data are very close to the Italian and European situation. Still too often the use of palliative treatments is limited to the end of life, and even in these cases the therapies are not necessarily started unless the suffering is too advanced “, comments Rosaria Alvaro, president of the Italian Society of Nursing Sciences. who, with Consulcesi Club, has designed a course aimed at training and sensitizing health professionals on palliative treatments and the management of acute pain.
Recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a human right and a “moral imperative of all health systems”, palliative care is estimated to require more than 56.8 million people worldwide every year, an increasing number increase following the aging of the population and the growth of non-communicable diseases and other chronic diseases.
“In our country, law 38 of 2010 – underlines the expert – has certainly represented a step forward in the recognition of the right of access to palliative sedation, establishing that the health system must be able to provide it” in all areas of care and in every phase of life and for any pathology with a chronic and evolutionary course ‘, but – he observes – there are still many patients suffering from non-oncological pathologies, but equally the cause of suffering, who do not have access, and / or to whom they are not proposed , such treatments. This is often due to a reluctance, first of all of the doctors and then of the patients and their families, often due to a lack of culture on palliation “, explains Rosaria Alvaro who in” Palliative care in Italy: an overview “, traces the development of the medical branch from the birth of the first hospices in 1967 to the present day, illustrating and connecting the multiple uses that are and could be made in Italy and in the world.
“It is necessary to promote and implement the culture of palliative care in the study courses, reaffirming their role in improving the physical, psychological and social condition of patients, their needs and those of their families. Finally, as the WHO has also repeatedly reiterated – he concludes – we need to improve the use of these treatments in the ‘continuum of care’ especially at the primary level – that is, in the care settings closest to the places where the patient and his family live ” with the aim of improving the quality of life of the person in charge and his family.
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