Palliative Care SIG annual report 2011

Annual Report of the Palliative Care Special Interest Group of the Society for Academic Primary Care – April 2011

The main achievement of the Palliative Care Special Interest Group has been to promote networking within members of the Special Interest Group and to allow members to meet and network with other disciplines and specialties who are active in clinical work, research and teaching in palliative care.

At the SAPC annual meeting in Norwich in 2010 we had an excellent workshop attended by the Domhnall Macauley, primary care editor of the BMJ who encouraged the attendees to continue with research in this field, especially in the area of intervention studies.  A panel of presentations also took place, and this generated much discussion and interest.  This panel was highlighted and disseminated via a BMJ blog, and a further panel is scheduled for Bristol SAPC 2011.

SIG members have continued leading large nationally funded projects, such as Patrick White at Kings College, Michael Moore, Southampton, Stephen Barclay at Cambridge and Scott Murray at Edinburgh University.  Thus, the Special Interest Group has helped integrate and bring these research centres together in a rather uniquely collaborative way, and encouraged lone researchers elsewhere.

Individual members of the group have also various leadership roles within the National Cancer Research Institute and have also started to promote further networking in this field.  Scott Murray and David Weller from Edinburgh University started a Special Interest Group at WONCA in Cancun in 2010 to encourage family doctors and researchers to be interested in palliative care, which is the very aim of this SIG.

We have identified a young academic, Adam Firth, interested in this field and he now operates as secretary to this group.  Working with him we have considered how best to recruit to our group and to that end he has attended the COMPASS/BMJ palliative care research conference on the 14^th and 15^th April 2011 and will also attend the Advance Care Planning International Society conference in London, to identify and network with primary care developers who might be interested in research.

We have requested that our allowance of £500 might be used to facilitate this.  Thus, our group is more virtual than one that meets frequently face to face, but is an important framework to permit networking and encouragement in this rapidly emerging field.  The International Primary Palliative Care Research Group continues to meet annually.  This year the annual scientific meeting is in May at the European Association of Palliative Care in Lisbon, and I am pleased to note that we have primary care practitioners from 12 different countries attending to start a taskforce in palliative care in the community at European level.  Thus the SIG is an important catalyst for international research and development.

Scott Murray       Stephen Barclay

Joint  Chairs of the Palliative Care Special Interest Group

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