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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: eapcnet.org/Aachen2005/index
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Abstract book 9th Congress of the EAPC, Aachen Germany
published by the EJPC - The Journal of the EAPC
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1,85 MB
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Plenary Lectures 9th Congress of the EAPC, Aachen Germany
published by the EJPC - The Journal of the EAPC
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0,36 MB
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| DISCLAIMER: 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 the publisher Hayward Medical |
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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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