How to raise awareness about palliative care and be “up to date” with the community and program itself?

Background/aims: Many people want to die at home, yet in western
countries many die in institutions like hospitals and nursing homes. The
developed Last Aid project helps to educate citizens about the basics of
palliative care and care for dying people. More than 15.000 citizens have
already participated at the Last Aid courses and more than 1500 trainers
have been trained across various European countries such as Denmark,
Germany, Switzerland, Germany, Lithuania, Austria, Scotland, Estonia and
Slovenia. The second step of the international research group, is to assess
the effectiveness of the program.
Methods: After literature research and semi-structured interviews we
will develop and validate a questionnaire for assessing the effectiveness
of the program. The developed questionnaire will be utilised in the second
phase of the international project.
Results: As a result of an intensive community-based intervention program
raising awareness of palliative care 15.000 citizens and 1500 trainers
have been educated. Assessing the effectiveness of the program is
the second phase of the Last Aid project. For this purpose, we will
develop a culturally sensitive questionnaire and use the questionnaire to
evaluate and refine the program in the future.
Conclusions: A community-based program for raising awareness about
palliative care could be effective. Through a developed and validated
evaluation and iterative adaptions of the program based on the needs of
the community we could see a more effective and efficient method of
social education. Future research will be carried out in cooperation with
the Last Aid Research Group Europe (LARGE).