Personnel problems: to work in palliative care units, it is necessary to create motivation

The lack of personnel in palliative care departments is critical, but it can be overcome or at least reduced. This is the opinion of the participants of the press conference held as part of the World Day of Hospice and Palliative Care.

Anatoliy Tsarenko, deputy head of the "Ukrainian League for the Development of Palliative and Hospice Care", said that today doctors have neither financial nor psychological motivation to work with terminally ill patients. "No matter how good palliative care units we build throughout Ukraine, without qualified personnel, we will not be able to provide effective palliative and hospice care there," Tsarenko believes.

Salary, length of vacation, pension benefits of doctors in hospice departments are almost the same as in therapeutic departments, and the physical and moral and psychological workload is ten times greater. That's why personnel are fired after working for 2-3 months in such conditions. Postgraduate education courses on providing palliative care to terminally ill patients are practically non-existent at the moment (there are only thematic improvement cycles at the Department of Palliative and Hospice Medicine of P.L. Shupyk National Academy of Medical Sciences and Ivano-Frankivsk Medical University). There is no specialization in palliative and hospice medicine in Ukraine. In addition, the budget does not provide for free training of nurses who are ready to go to work in the palliative care department at the NMAPO named after P. L. Shupyk. For example, a nurse must pay UAH 1,400 today. for completing a 1-month improvement cycle.

The head of the "Ukrainian League for the Development of Palliative and Hospice Care" Vasyl Knyazevich initiated the next meeting of the "League" presidium dedicated to the issue of personnel training. This will allow the public to prepare proposals for solving this problem for the Ministry of Health.

For reference

According to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine and the Center for Medical Statistics of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, in recent years, mortality (excluding external causes) in Ukraine is about 600,000 people per year. In 2015, 594,000 people died in Ukraine, and the population mortality rate reached the level of 14.7‰ (excluding the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol). The total mortality of the population and mortality from certain causes in Ukraine is twice as high as the corresponding indicators of the EU countries.

According to experts' calculations, during the last five years in Ukraine every year about 500 thousand patients in the final period of life need palliative and hospice care (PCD). Thus, every year, together with their family members, about 2 million people need psychological and medical support.

In addition, during the years 2014-2017, a significant number of disabled and incurable (incurable) patients appeared in Ukraine from among the wounded in the ATO zone, as well as among forced migrants from Donetsk and Luhansk regions.