School of Medicine's Palliative Care team deliver CPD update to Gibraltar's GPs

The University’s Palliative Care team has delivered three days of professional training to GPs across Gibraltar, supporting GP education in the country as part of a formal collaboration between City Hospice, Cancer Relief Gibraltar and the Gibraltar Health Authority.

The course was delivered by the School of Medicine’s Dr Fiona Rawlinson & Dr Margred Capel from City Hospice and is based on the University’s existing Palliative Care Update short course, which is itself part of the School of Medicine's growing portfolio of palliative medicine CPD courses.

The one-day course was repeated over three days to maximise opportunities for GPs to attend, and by the end of the programme, the course had been delivered to all GPs across Gibraltar.

Other attendees included professionals from the multi-disciplinary team involved in caring for palliative patients in Gibraltar.  Staff from each of the adult wards, mental health, district nursing, allied health (occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians, speech and language therapists), elderly residential services, medicine, surgery and psychiatry were able to take part.

The course explored the principles of holistic care, symptom control and care of the dying patient and their family, and provides training to increase palliative care skills to meet the rising morbidity and mortality of incurable conditions – now no longer confined to cancer, but encompassing dementia, end stage respiratory and end stage cardiac conditions.

The course also helps healthcare professionals to develop systems that focus on improving the quality of care and culture within teams.

Feedback from the course has been extremely positive, with attendees highlighting the quality of speakers, the range of content, and the importance of acknowledging engaging in communication with the patient and their family.

This professional development course is a result of a collaboration between Cardiff University, City Hospice, Cancer Relief Gibraltar and the Gibraltar Health Authority. We hope to be able to build on the success of this course to plan future learning events with the aim of further raising the excellent standard of end of life care in Gibraltar.

Special thanks to:

The team at Bleak House, led by Paula Poggio, for the excellent facilities.

Cancer Relief for providing food & organisation throughout the sessions.

Gibraltar Health Authority (GHA) and Elderly Relief Services (ERS) for facilitating staff attendance, and GHA for funding the training.

Find out more

If you are interested in attending one of the University's portfolio of palliative medicine short courses, visit our webpage to find details of upcoming courses. You may also be interested in exploring the Palliative Medicine for Health Care Professionals (MSc).

Contact us

If you would like more information about how we can work with your organisation to create and deliver a similar bespoke programme, please contact our friendly team and we'll be happy to help you.