Antea Worldwide Palliative Care Conference

Rome, 12-14 November 2008

ABSTRACT FORM

Presenting author TOTAL PAIN

Chiara Taboga
Author: Chiara Taboga
Email:
chiarataboga@hotmail.com Is very difficlt to give pain a unique meaning! Is possible to find out in litterature a lot of pain’s
definitions, some indicate pain as a sy,mptom, some as s deasease, some as a syndrome, but we
Phone believe hat the one wich describes better the multidimensional nature and the subjectivity of pain
is the Mc Caffery’s:
“Pain is… everthing the patient feel as pain and exsist everytime the patient says it is.”
Mobile phone This definition assert peremptorily the central position of patient as the only and one source of
information about the pain he feels and this vision gives the patient a double role of subject and
object of pain’s management.
Pain is present in the 70-90% of palliative care patients, this is why pain assessment and
Please underline the most management is one of themain goal in palliative medicine.
appropriate category for your In a large number of interwivs patients underline the suffer that disability associated with pain
abstract causes.The biggest complayn is the lose of autonomy in different levels: the impossibility of
made activities of daily living, the loss of the social role or the part in the family, or in the work.
• Pain and other symptoms
In this way pain should be seen as muldimensional sympthom, where different dimensions
• Palliative care for cancer patients interact toghether.
• Palliative care for non cancer Phisical Pain: it is quite easy to perceive, sually we ascribe it to particular situations such as
patients invasive practices, wounds or falls…
• Paediatric palliative care
Psychological Pain: more compless to understand but now the operatort are giving more
attention to this dimension. It is usually express with sudden mutation of mood, anger, anxiety,
• Palliative care for the elderly
frustration.
• The actors of palliative care
Social Pain: we can identify with the loss of soial role, isolation, segregation or shame.
• Latest on drugs Spiritual pain: the big mistery, often confuse with loss of religiose beliefs.
• Pain Burocratic Pain: the incredible mass of clinical practice, papers and visits, queques and forms
patients and families must do to receive too late the assistence they need now.
• Illness and suffering through The influence of pain on the quality of life of the patient and his family, the influence on the
media compliance and on he consequent efficacy of the therapy suggest to consider the pain the fifth
vital sign, assessed and managed with proper care.
• Marginalisation and social stigma
This is a very ambitious goal becouse to gain it, we need a cultural change wich involves
at the end of life professionists, but also polititians and health’s administrators. They should start to undersatand
• Palliative care advocacy projects and propose management of pain as a care prioity made all the services easy to reach for all tha
• Prognosis and diagnosis community, the antalgic drugs available, give to the people the rightinformation and to doctors
communication in and nurses the right education.
different cultures
• Communication between doctor-
patient and patient-
equipe
• Religions and cultures versus
suffering, death and
bereavement
Session: Pain
• Public institution in the world:
palliative care policies Chair: Prof. Alessandro F. Sabato, Prof. Guido Fanelli
and law
• Palliative care: from villages to
metropolies
• Space, light and gardens for the
terminally ill patient
• End-of-life ethics
• Complementary therapies
• Education, training and research
• Fund-raising and no-profit
• Bereavement support
• Volunteering in palliative care
• Rehabilitation in palliative care
• Palliative care quality indicators