There were three of us who traveled to Amsterdam: Kateřina a physician, Štěpánka, a nurse and Tereza a social worker. We are from the Czech Republic and we work together in Cesta domů (English translation: The Homecoming) an organisation that provides specialised palliative care for patients in their last few weeks of life at home.
Cesta domů has been providing care to adult patients since it was founded in 2001. Two years ago we decided that it was time to provide care for children as well so during the year 2015 we accepted seven paediatric patients for the first time. Our trip to The Netherlands was inspired by the training in psychosocial care that Maraliza de Haan, a consultant from ICPCN, had given us in June 2015 in Prague. With pleasure we accepted her invitation for a three day fellowship. We wanted to familiarise ourselves with the system of children’s palliative care in The Netherlands.
The internship programme was full of new experience and we found it very interesting. We visited Mappa Mondo (now known as Kinderhotel Mappa Mondo), a children’s hospice providing mainly respite services for seriously ill children. Than we met Marianne Bontjes from GGD and she told us about their GIZ method which helps them to identify the needs and strengths of families with a seriously ill child.
At the Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam, we were introduced to Dr Netteke Schouten, a paediatric oncologist. We spoke about working in a multidisciplinary team and about communication with sick children and their parents. We also visited KIZO – the organization providing home-care for adult and paediatric patients. In AMC Amsterdam we finally met Marinka de Groot. She is a nurse and case manager from EMMA Home team that coordinates the care of hospital colleagues, general practitioners and homecare.
In Leiden we visited the Nursing Day Care Centre, De Schavaiten, lead by Christa van de Bornand. We discussed her work concerning the integration of sick and healthy children.
Inspirational
Our internship was really inspirational. We met with a lot of helpful and enthusiastic professionals who are working hard for the benefit of their young patients. The main takeaway for us is that functional cooperation between different providers of care is possible and it is a realistic goal.
Many thanks go to all who gave us their time, especially to Maraliza de Haan and Meggi Schuiling-Otten, the Director of Stichting PAL, who prepared the programme for us and very kindly took care of us.
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