The day began with a ‘meet the experts’ session, which allowed younger researchers to discuss various aspects of palliative care research with established experts. Sessions included: How to read and write a research paper, how to do action research, systematic review methods, and writing an abstract.
In the first plenary session, Professor David Currow gave an overview of recently published papers in outcomes research, aiming to develop research methodologies that can reliably examine the quality of end of life care.
Dr Brelin from Norway presented an innovative study using government data to conduct an inquiry into opioid consumption using a sample of over 44 000, over a period of 4 years. In Norway the prescription of opioids in hospital is not reported, so the dataset come from home care and nursing homes, a data group that is under researched in the field of palliative care.
The early researcher award went to Professor Lieve van den Block, Palliative Care Researcher, Brussels, Belgium, for her work on palliative care in the community and palliative care for older people. Prof van den Block gave the audience an overview of her career and research interests, before drawing attention to the need for palliative care researchers to make sure that their important work is seen by policy makers. Read a commentary by Prof van den Block on the EAPC blog.
Professor Sheila Payne, President of the EAPC commented on the award, saying: “The Early Researcher Award marks out people who are working at an international level who represent the future of palliative care across the globe, because they’ll be doing the cutting edge research and going into the leadership positions in many different places.
The selection committee looks through applicants’ CVs against very strict criteria, to identify people who have an all-round level of a very high standard of development. .. We invite the winner to do a plenary talk and I think that’s a good marker for people to aspire to in the future.”
Oliver Minton from the UK and Dr Daisy Janssen from The Netherlands were awarded joint second prize, recognizing their important contribution as young researchers to the field of palliative care.
The EAPC awarded a special commendation to Dr Andrew Olagunju from Nigeria in recognition of his excellent research on psychooncology and palliative care under particularly challenging conditions. Look out for an interview with Dr Olagunju on the Africa edition of ehospice next week.
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