Jordan palliative care and pain initiative 2011: building capacity for palliative care programs in public hospitals

Jordan palliative care initiative was launched in Jordan as WHO demonstration project at 2003 to implement palliative care in Jordan. As a result, palliative care program was established at King Hussein Cancer Center as a model for palliative care in the region. Yet, still only a minority of patients have access to palliative care in Jordan. The access to opioids is still limited by many factors like fear of opioids among health care workers and policies limiting the duration of opioids prescription. There was a need for a society that would take the initiative to address these challenges and help coordinating the efforts to implement palliative care across Jordan. As a result, the Jordan Palliative Care Society (JPCS) was established in March 2010. The vision of the JPCS is to make palliative care accessible to all patients in needs in Jordan. The JPCS decided to focus on building capacity in eight public hospitals by training health care workers and empowering them to lead the change in their facilities. In collaboration with WHO office in Jordan and ministry of health, JPCS conducted a 3-day workshop in palliative care and pain management for 24 health care workers from eight public hospitals. The goal of this initiative was to establish palliative care teams as a nucleus for palliative care and pain programs in these hospitals. In this study, we evaluated the outcome of providing intensive workshops (class room and bed side) for 24 health care workers from eight public hospitals.