Palliative Care

The Palliative Care group aims to encourage the development of palliative care for people with chronic progressive neurological disease.  For that purpose the following priorities derived from the EAN Strategic plan are of paramount importance:

• Increase the availability and standards of neurological service by establishing evidence-based guidelines
• Increase the interest in palliative care by featuring at the scientific programme and at the educational courses at the annual EAN congress

This has been in collaboration with the European Association for Palliative Care and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Presidents of the EAPC and EAN at the Congress in Copenhagen. The EAN and EAPC will continue to collaborate to help foster the development of care for patients, and their families, and to empower health care workers, in particular neurologists and palliative care physicians to offer the highest possible care.

The Panel has been working on:

• A consensus review on the development of palliative care for patients with chronic and progressive neurological disease:
  Oliver DJ, Borasio GD, Caraceni A, de Visser M, Grisold W, Lorenzl S, Veronese S, Voltz R. A consensus review on the development of palliative care for patients with chronic and progressive neurological disease.  Eur J Neurol 2016; doi:10.1111/ene.12889
• A Core Curriculum for palliative care and neurology – with core educational aims for both neurologists and palliative medicine specialists. This is still being developed.
• Developing sessions on palliative care for the EAN Congresses both at the Scientific and Educational Programme.
• Continuing collaboration with the World Federation of Neurology

In 2017 it is hoped to develop a collaborative research project looking at the effectiveness and acceptability of palliative care for patients with neurological disease.  This is envisaged to be a multicentre project across Europe.