To improve palliative care in terminally ill patients, the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) seeks to promote a specialty in that area, so it works on the design of the academic program that it intends to implement together with the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), as well as to develop diploma certificates for the continuing education jointly with Mexico City’s Health Secretariat and include this subject in the curricula of physicians being trained in this subject, informed Ivan Rubio Gayosso, Head of the Postgraduate Studies and Research Section (SEPI) of the Higher School of Medicine (ESM).
He stated that every physician, psychologist and nutritionist must be knowledgeable in palliative care; thus, it is necessary for higher education institutions to include learning units focused on this topic so that they can be incorporated into the teams conducting home visits or attending emergency services, and into health, intensive therapy and hospitalization institutes for this type of patients.
During the Palliative Care International Day, celebrated on the second Saturday of October, the specialist mentioned that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2017, although 40 million people suffered from a terminal illnesses in the world, only 14 percent of them received palliative care adequately.
In view of this situation, the General Health Council (CSG) promoted the update of the Comprehensive Palliative Care Management Guide with the participation of several entities, including the IPN, which entered into force on August 14, 2018, after being published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF), and that must be implemented to the letter by public and private institutions in order to provide a better care.
Ivan Rubio Gayosso, Maria Eugenia Aguilar Najera and Hector Nebot Garcia, professors and researchers of the Higher School of Medicine (ESM), contributed to the revision of chapters about bioethics and human resources training.
In this regard, Dr. Rubio Gayosso said that the guide updating will allow Mexicans in such a situation to have the benefit of a better life quality based on reducing their physical pain, and meeting their spiritual and family mourning needs.
He acknowledged that the need to strengthen palliative care is due to the modification of the population dynamics and the increase in life expectancy, issues fostering the increase of chronic-degenerative and oncological diseases, multiple lateral sclerosis, AIDS, respiratory disorders such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and emphysema, diabetes, renal ailments and high blood pressure.
He said that the updated guide is an outstanding effort of doctors, nurses, psychologists, nutritionists, social workers, thanatologists, lawyers and bioethics experts from different health organizations and the academic sector, who expressed in the document the dignified and appropriate treatment that patients must receive.
Hector Nebot considered essential for the IPN to state in the guide that palliative care is a legal obligation as expressed in Article 4 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, which states the right to health protection by the public, private and social institutions which must guarantee the sufficient and necessary provision of supplies so that patients can have access to those services.
In turn, Dr. Aguilar Najera stated that the bioethical component is essential in this type of document because it is related to the treatment of the patient and the proper way of taking care of him/her so that he/she suffers the least possible during the last stage of its life.
In the chapter on bioethical considerations, two essential points were included: the first one concerns the assent that minors can express—when their reasoning capacity thus allows it—to stop the curative treatment and start exclusively the use of palliatives, and the other emphasizes the obligation of public and private health institutions to have enough supplies and to address the needs of patients with pain.
The IPN also modified the human resources training chapter, which describes the comprehensive fulfillment of all patient needs.
Source: Gobierno de México | Instituto Politécnico Nacional
https://www.ipn.mx/CCS/comunicados/ver-comunicado.html?y=2018&n=397
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