Authors
1 Health Services Management, Health Management and Economics Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
2 Health Information Technology Research Center, Student Research Committee, Department of Medical Library and Information Sciences, School of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
Palliative care has been proposed as a multidisciplinary method for providing patients with care. The
present study proposes to discuss the necessary principles required for any country to successfully
implement a palliative medicine program. The present study was a systematic review conducted in
January 2019, and the articles related to palliative care requirements on the databases of Web of
Science, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Ovid, ProQuest, Wiley, and Google Scholar from January
1, 2009, to January 20, 2019, were searched. Strategy for searching and selecting the articles was
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‑Analyses Guidelines. The findings
showed that the World Health Organization has introduced for main phases for increasing these types
of services including: defining and developing a national policy, training and educating healthcare
employees and general public, as well as pain relief. In general, two scenarios are described in the
development of palliative medicine: bottom‑up and top‑down approaches. In conclusion, although
there seem to be progressing activities regarding the issue of making palliative medicine accessible,
there are still many obstacles including lack of adequate knowledge and political support, social and
cultural problems, inadequate training and education of physicians and nurses, fixed and biased
attitude in medical professions, and low priority of palliative medicine among policymakers. Therefore,
it could be said that implementing palliative medicine programs requires an overall change in culture,
public and individual education, political support, and appropriate policies.
Keywords
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