Running a Volunteer Program for Palliative Care in a Chinese Hospital: Our Practice and Experience / 中国医学科学杂志(英文版)

The establishment and development of volunteer team are very important in the whole process of palliative care. The concept and practice of palliative care have been developed in Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) since the end of 2012. Great progress has been made in different aspects. Volunteers play an extremely important role in the development of palliative care in PUMCH. The whole work began with the establishment of volunteer teams. This article introduces the process of the establishment and development of palliative care volunteer team in PUMCH, aiming to provide practical references for hospitals in mainland China to develop their own palliative care volunteer team.

Recognition of Palliative Care in Chinese Clinicians: How They Feel and What They Know / 中国医学科学杂志(英文版)

Objective To investigate doctors' feelings when providing medical care to end-stage patients, and their understanding as well as reflection about theoretical concepts of palliative medicine. Methods Questionnaires were delivered through a social networking platform to 1500 clinicians of different specialties in 10 proviences of China. It covered issues of background information, self-assessment of familiarity to palliative care, prior training history, emotional attitude toward end-stage patients, and the reflections on clinical practice. Logistic regression analysis and chi-square test were used to analyse the categorical variables. Results There were 379 clinicians who completed the questionnaires and submitted successfully. Among them, 66.8% (253/379) had attended palliative care training courses more than twice; 66.8% (253/379) clinicians percieved powerless feeling when facing end-stage patients. We found that the education on palliative medicine was significantly associated to doctors' better comprehension on the concept of palliative care (OR=6.923, P=0.002). Doctors who were more familiar with palliative medicine were less likely to perceive powerless feelings (χ =13.015, P<0.001), and would be more likely to concern about patients and their family members in their clinical work (χ =28.754, P<0.001, χ =24.406, P<0.001). Conclusion The powerless feeling is prevalent in Chinese doctors when facing end-stage patients. Palliative care help them overcome the negative feelings and act more caring in clinic. More careful designed educational strategies that adapt to Chinese actual situation are needed to improve doctors' cognition on palliative care.