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Social Worker role's in Palliative Care:Insights from the field

Social Worker role's in Palliative Care:Insights from the field

The student of Medical & Psychiatric Social Work, Assam Kaziranga University, have organized a webinar on 21st August,2021 at 10:30am on the topic "Social Worker Role's in Palliative Care: Insights from the Field" under the supervision of Ms Rini Gogoi, Assistant Professor of School of Social Sciences, Assam Kaziranga University. The key speaker of the webinar was Ms Panna Bharali who is currently working as a secretary of Pratishruti Cancer & Palliative Trust and Mr Wazir Bin Qutub who is joint secretary of Pratishruti Cancer & Palliative Trust, Dibrugarh, Assam. The Director of Pratrishruti Cancer & Palliative Trust had also attended the webinar session. The webinar basically revolved around the  importance of palliative care and role's of social worker in palliative care.

The webinar session was started by the speaker Ms Panna Bharali who herself is a survivor of cancer . She began with a presentation and talked about their organization "Pratishruti Cancer & Palliative Trust", how they work with the cancer patients and the roles of volunteers in providing palliative care to the sick people. She highlighted various points as "what do we do when sick people do not get better and Can anything be done to help them? "She talked about palliative care and misconceptions regarding palliative care. She continued by highlighting the needs and importance of palliative care and problems contributing to suffering in incurable illness. After this, the next part was by presented by the second speaker Mr Wazir Bin Qutub. His topic of discussion were:

  • Holistic Approach- The holistic approach looks at problems in four groups-physical, psychological, social and spiritual.
  • The different models of palliative care delivery which includes-
  • Home based palliative care
  • Palliative care clinic
  • Day care support
  • Hospital palliative care team
  • Impatient unit
  • The importance of communication skills, listening skills, verbal and non- verbal skills.
  • Use of the open-end questions, Closed-ended question, and avoid the leading questions.
  • Importance to tell the truth to the patients about their disease.

In this webinar, the director of pratishruti cancer and palliative trusts Dr. Gayatri Gogoi was also present. She also talked about their organization. And she replied to the all questions of the students.

The main key points of this webinar were, palliative care is an important process. Patients diagnosed with a disease like cancer require not only physical control of disease and symptoms but also need help in coming to terms with their disease. Through this process, improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention of earlier identification. Palliative care also helps to prevent psychological and spiritual problems.