On January 24-25, the Open Society Georgia Foundation and the Open Society Institute organized an international training course – Effective Pain Management for Incurable Patients.
The seminar brought together one hundred doctors from hospices and home care services operating in Georgia, the Palliative Care Service at the Oncology National Center, various hospitals and out-patient clinics.
The event was opened by Mikheil Dolidze, the Deputy Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs, Otar Toidze, the chairman of the Healthcare and Social Issues Committee of Parliament, and Ketevan Khutsishvili, the Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. The seminar has been run for two days by professors of the Institute for Palliative Medicine at the San Diego Hospice.
The training course run by the US trainers, aims to increase doctors’ qualification to help them improve the quality of life in patients with incurable diseases through the provision of a pain-free life for them.
Currently there are affordable ways for pain management and for relief from distress suffered by not only cancer patients but also people with such chronicle diseases as cardiovascular diseases, stroke, AIDs etc., including patients that have entered the terminal phase.
Both the elderly and children face the problem.
Therefore, the seminar will contribute strongly to the improvement of the knowledge of the medical staff in the field.