Health care workers from Mount Kenya region kicked off a five day introduction to palliative care training in Nyeri on Monday.

Drawn from the clinical field, the doctors, nurses and nutritionists will learn various concepts of palliative care with the aim of strengthening palliative care provision within the hospitals where they work in.

With a third of the participants being doctors, there is an indication that this cadre of health care providers is increasingly embracing the role of palliative care to patients with life threatening illnesses.

During the introductory phase of the training, the participants had a chance to watch the Front-line palliative care film and gave the following feedback as their pick from the video.

• ‘Palliative care is not only for patients but also for the family and those around the patient’
• ‘Continuous counseling of family is important; you need to keep visiting them’
• ‘This care can be provided in any setup’
• ‘To have effective palliative care, you need to work as a team’

Among their expectations include understanding more about palliative care with respect to breaking bad news, how to take care of patients with life threatening illnesses, understanding pain management and the counseling aspect in end of life care.

A team from Kenya Hospices and Palliative Care Association (KEHPCA), Nyeri Provincial General Hospital (PGH) Palliative Care Unit (PCU) and Nyeri Hospice will train the team on breaking bad news, Principles of Counseling, Pain Management, Sexuality in palliative care, Nutrition and Communication among other aspects in palliative care.

KEHPCA’s Education and Research Officer Dr Asaph Kinyanjui said that inclusion of the hospital and hospice teams from Nyeri is one way of capacity building them to offer training to more health care providers from withing and beyond the region.

The training is part of the Tropical Health and Education Trust project taking place in three hospitals in Kenya, namely Nyeri PGH, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and Homa Bay District Hospital.

Over 20 participants drawn from various hospitals in the region are present for the training that will end on Friday.