A $5 million campaign has been launched by a trio of organizations seeking to improve education, research and leadership in palliative care.
The Advancing Expert Care Campaign was created by the Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation and the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center.
"There is a perfect storm brewing," Jennifer Gentry, president of the HPNA board of directors said in a statement. "With the aging Baby Boomer population, the number of people with serious illness is growing, and there will soon be a critical shortage of hospice and palliative professionals. Our ability to adequately care for patients with serious illness could soon become a critical issue."
This announcement has come only a month after an Institute of Medicine report Dying in America, cited "a pressing need" to improve and expand the nation’s palliative care services.
The report authors noted that end-of-life care has come a long way in recent years, but still has much room for improvement. The authors said there continues to be too few palliative care specialists and not enough knowledge in providers outside of the field. The nation's fragmented healthcare system only proves to heighten the problems by failing to reward physicians for care coordination.
One of the recommendations from the IOM report is increased education and professional development in the area, which is the aim of the new campaign.
The Expert Care Campaign has raised about $1 million toward its goal. With the funding, the organizations plan to determine the educational needs of palliative care specialists and design programs accordingly; promote best practices research; develop nursing leadership programs and promote nursing certification; and create programs to draw professionals toward certification in this area.
Nursing is a natural area of focus in the attempt to increase the nation's palliative care bandwidth. By definition, a palliative care team includes a physician, nurse and social worker and can include other professionals like spiritual leaders. It is quicker and less costly to educate nurses and get them into practice and they are trained in nearly all aspects needed to perform palliative care.
Todd Hultman, a nurse practitioner and former president of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association told the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that nurses are particularly suited to perform palliative care treatment because they focus not only on pain and symptom management, but also patient advocacy and education and holistic care. Both serve caregivers as well as patients and are focused on taking the patient's wishes into account when planning for care.
It is likely that the demand for palliative care providers is only going to grow in the coming years. According to the Center to Advance Palliative Care, the number of hospitals with 50 or more beds offering the services increased by 125% between 2000 and 2008.
These services help patients understand their conditions and make timely decisions about their treatment options. Patients can benefit from palliative care at any stage of illness and studies have shown that when patients are provided the treatment earlier, outcomes are better and costs to the system are lowered.