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Report 9th Congress of the EAPC
Aachen,
Germany, 6-10
April 2005
To
view the scientific programme and the presented abstracts, please
go to: www.eapcnet.org/Aachen2005/index
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These documents can be downloaded as pdf files for personal
academic use. Anyone wishing to use it for commercial
purposes or needing to make multiple copies must contact
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Medical |
Kathy
Foley, 9th Congress
of the EAPC, Aachen Germany,
LECTURE ON: How to develop a Palliative Care Programme
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Stein
Kaasa, 9th Congress of the EAPC, Aachen Germany
LECTURE
ON: How to establish a Palliative Care Programme
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Introduction
The 9th Congress of the European Association for Palliative
Care, was held together with the 6th Congress of the German
Association for Palliative Medicine in Aachen in April 2005.
Aachen is situated on the border between Germany, Belgium and
the Netherlands.
However, the congress title has more than a geographical meaning:
we wanted to discuss the borders that we experience in palliative
care from a physical, psychological, social, spiritual or economic
perspective. The congress tried to find ways to go across and
beyond these borders.
Recent congresses of the European Association for Palliative
Care have been praised for their international reputation, which
has now reached far beyond Europe. The congress in Aachen has
build upon this reputation and tried to expand it even further.
We had prepared the congress with as much international participation
as possible. We also tried to involve as many German palliative
care professionals as possible in the international palliative
care community.
Scientific Programme
The 9th EAPC Congress has been a great success. The scientific
committee has received much positive feedback from participants
and speakers.
The broad spectrum of topics in the plenary and the parallel
sessions covered not only pain and symptom control but also
psychosocial and spiritual issues. Robert Twycross delivered
an outstanding Floriani-lecture on “Death without suffering?”
Other hot topics were sessions on palliative sedation and on
prognostic scores.
Meet the expert sessions were interesting and in spite of the
early time slots had a lot of participants, in some cases filling
the session halls with about 100 participants. Parallel sessions
also were frequented well.
The poster exhibition was visited well, especially in the Saturday
morning break. Poster awards were presented during the closing
ceremony and one of the authors had been given the opportunity
for a short presentation of his project after receiving the
award.
In many sessions more questions were raised than answered, for
example evaluating the role of anorexia and cachexia in far
advanced cancer and when and how to treat it. However, it seems
to be an integral part of palliative care that it raises questions
that have not been considered in other areas of medicine.
Time Structure
The time structure was similar to the previous EAPC congress
in The Hague. Meet the expert sessions in the morning were used
for intense discussions. Two plenary lectures followed by a
one hour coffee break and then up to nine parallel sessions
made up the morning programme. In the two hour lunch break an
industrial symposium was offered on Friday and Saturday. The
afternoon programme was similar to the morning programme with
two plenary lectures, a one hour coffee break and another parallel
session with 8 – 9 symposia and free communication sessions.
The long breaks received positive feedback, as there was enough
time for meeting colleagues, discussions and networking.
Social Programme
The social programme was received well by the participants.
Up to 900 people took part in the Get together party on Thursday
evening that bridged the gap between the German and the European
congress. The concert of the Young Philharmonic Orchestra
from Cologne which was offered for free for congress participants
on Friday evening was visited well and got positive feedback
for the music of Vivaldi, Mozart and Bach as well as for the
location of the concert in the cathedral of Aachen.
A performance of the world champion Julius Petri on the gymwheel
started the opening ceremony on Friday, and a five minute
session with an African drummer organised by Help the Hospices
started the scientific programme on Saturday.
Market Place
A market place was set up between the session halls on the
ground floor next to the registration office. National and
international associations (EAPC, Help the Hospices, International
Observatory on End-of-Life Care) had been offered an opportunity
to present their work. Though the market place covered a rather
large area, interest in this option was so high that the available
space was used completely. The market place was used extensively
by participants for information, discussion and exchange.
Some data:
All in all 2343 participants registered for the German and
for the EAPC congress. For the EAPC congress a total of 1.879
participants were registered from a multitude of countries
(ALBANIA, ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA,
BRAZIL, BULGARIA, CANADA, CHILE, COLUMBIA, CROATIA, CYPRUS,
CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK, ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY,
GREECE, HAITI, HUNGARY, ICELAND, INDIA, IRELAND, ISRAEL, ITALY,
JAPAN, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, LUXEMBOURG, MALAYSIA, MALTA, MEXICO,
MOLDOVA, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NORWAY, PERU, POLAND, PORTUGAL,
ROMANIA, RUSSIA, SAUDI ARABIA, SINGAPORE, SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA,
SOUTH AFRICA, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS,
TURKEY, UNITED KINGDOM, USA, YUGOSLAVIA).
Included in this number are 53 invited speakers for the EAPC
congress and another 23 speakers who were invited to do lectures
both on the German and the EAPC congress. Also included are
33 guests of the EAPC such as honorary president Vittorio
Ventafridda. From the 1.725 paying participants 511 were registered
both for the German and EAPC congresses, whereas 1.212 were
registered only for the EAPC congress.
Large groups of participants were registered from the UK (168
participants), Netherlands (166 participants), Belgium (160
participants), Spain (106 participants) and Sweden 108). The
low number of participants from Central and Eastern Europe
(only 90 participants) in spite of reduced registration fees
for these nationalities implicates the still existing problems
in these areas with low resources and high barriers impeding
the implementation of palliative care. A total of 120 participants
was registered from countries outside of Europe, in some cases
as far away as Japan, Australia or South America.
Lukas Radbruch, Friedemann Nauck and
Stein Kaasa
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