The Edinburgh University Palliative Care Society launched at the start of the 2022/23 academic year and we’ve been busy raising the profile of palliative care among the student body.
All medical students will encounter patients with progressive, incurable conditions that will result in their death, regardless of the specialism they end up pursuing. This is why we want to provide a space to encourage further learning in this hugely important, but often overlooked, area of medicine.
Events and guest speakers
In mid-October, we held our inaugural event, ‘An Introduction to Palliative Care’. We welcomed Dr Grace Ball and Susan Lawson who shared their experiences working in palliative care. The discussion was wide-ranging, exploring commonly held beliefs (and misbeliefs) about palliative care and the hospice. We were delighted to have medical students, nursing students and practising professionals in attendance for our first event.
We held two further talks in semester one with two fantastic speakers and educators. The first was Dr Clare Nwobi who delivered a teaching seminar on palliative care emergencies. We learned about catastrophic bleeds, malignant spinal cord compression and superior vena cava obstruction, and how these are managed in palliative care. There is significant overlap with oncological emergencies, so this was fantastic revision ahead of the 5th year OSCE exams! We also learned about pain, nausea, and vomiting, which are extremely common yet distressing symptoms, and how to manage these effectively.
Professor Scott Murray kindly offered to give us a talk on international palliative care, drawing on his extensive experience researching and teaching around the globe. It was fascinating to learn about the great disparities in palliative care provision around the world, different beliefs and rituals at the end of life, and how this impacts the experience of dying.
What’s coming up?
This coming semester we are looking forward to hosting a public debate with the Debating Society on the subject of the proposed Assisted Dying Bill that is going through the Scottish Parliament. This piece of legislation aims to enable mentally competent adults who are terminally ill with assistance in ending their life at their request. We wanted to host a debate to allow medical students and practising healthcare professionals to hear both sides of the argument and consider the impact of this legislation. It promises to be a very interesting evening and we will circulate details of this event in the near future.
It has been really exciting to start a new society, and to share our enthusiasm for palliative care with the medical student body. If anyone is interested in joining (or even being on committee!), please get in touch via email or Facebook.
Email us at eupalliativecaresociety@gmail.com
