To deepen the understanding of palliative care among the public and patients, the first step is to better equip our colleagues. HA is planning to allocate more resources for training in palliative care, enabling all healthcare colleagues to be equipped with relevant basic knowledge and skills.

Palliative care has become a specialty in Hong Kong in 1998. Yet, other specialty teams acquire inadequate understanding about palliative care, so there is a gap in referring patients between specialties. “Non-PC team often encounters difficulties when treating patients with terminal illness, for example on symptom management, breaking bad news to patients and families, handling questions like ‘Am I going to die?’,” explains Dr Annie Kwok, Consultant (Medicine and Geriatrics) of Caritas Medical Centre.

Under the new service framework, HA will enhance training in three aspects to cover the staff of different specialties, settings and grades. Firstly, basic training, in form of workshop and talk etc., will be enhanced to give all healthcare colleagues an understanding of the concepts and principles of palliative care, and the idea about advance care planning (ACP). This also enables colleagues to identify patients in need of palliative care early for appropriate and timely referral to PC team.

Secondly, training will be arranged for non-PC teams working directly with patients who are suffering from life-threatening or life-limiting illnesses. With the shared care model and cross-specialties collaboration in patient care, non-PC teams can learn the knowledge and skills needed for symptom control, ACP and bereavement counselling through clinical attachment, rotation, direct coaching and case conference etc.

Thirdly, PC team also needs continuous specialist training to consolidate the provision of specialist palliative care service. Meanwhile, they will also acquire knowledge of other specialties, such as nephrology, cardiology and pulmonary, in treating terminal diseases so as to strengthen the cross-specialties cooperation and communication.