Bridging the Gap: Delivering Palliative and End-of-life Care within Emergency Medical Services

Presented by EAPC Task Force on Palliative Care & Emergency Medical Services.

The role of emergency medical services (EMS) has evolved in recent years with paramedics responding increasingly to patients nearing the end of life. For example, in the Czech Republic, more than 50% of terminally ill patients get in contact with EMS in their last 30 days of life. Many of these patients may benefit from a palliative approach rather than hospital conveyance and admission, especially when hospitalisation and hospital death is not something they wished for. 

A number of successful projects and initiatives aimed at integrating palliative approach to care into EMS are being implemented around the world. The webinar series will present some of these initiatives, with speakers from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The speakers are all members of the newly formed EAPC Task Force on Palliative Care & Emergency Medical Services, and their background spans paramedicine and emergency medicine, palliative care, education, research, and advocacy. There will be a Q&A session at the end of each webinar. 

All webinars will be held online and require registration. Registered participants will receive a link to join the webinar via email which will be sent one day before the webinar. Please check your spam folder in case you do not receive the link by then.

The registration deadline is 3 days before each event. After that the registration will close. The maximum number of participants is limited to 300. 

Please note that the webinars are scheduled using Central European Time (CET). 

All presentations will be in English.

All webinars in the series will be recorded. By registering to the webinar, participants agree with the recording.

If you have any additional questions, please contact Michala Chatrná at m.chatrna@paliativnicentrum.cz. 

4 March 2025, 17.00-18.30 CET  

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The third session in the webinar series will present experiences from, quite literally, all over the world. Federico Semeraro’s presentation will focus on the intersection of EMS and palliative care in Italy. It will explore approaches used in Bologna for integrating palliative care within EMS, and highlight the role of collaboration in improving patient outcomes and end-of-life care. Caleb Hanson Gage will give us a brief overview of EMS and palliative care systems in South Africa. He will discuss the current efforts to integrate these services within the country, including areas of ongoing research. Alix Carter will outline the evolution of the Paramedics and Palliative Care programme in Canada from its origins as a pilot. She will provide an overview of her and her colleagues’ current work on the programme’s national expansion, as well as evaluation of the impact of population and system differences on the programme’s effectiveness. 

Speakers:

Federico Semeraro is an Anaesthesia and Intensive Care consultant at the Department of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care, and EMS in Bologna, Italy. He has recently been elected as the chair of the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) and is involved in integrating palliative care practices within EMS settings. His expertise includes emergency care with a system approach, resuscitation science, and awareness campaigns.

Caleb Hanson Gage currently works as a programme coordinator for the City of Johannesburg EMS Training Academy. He is a PhD candidate in Emergency Medicine, and his academic interests include out of hospital medical care, EMS systems and palliative care.

Alix Carter is a Medical Director of Research at EHS Nova Scotia and at Western University. Her research interests include EMS policy and system design, with current focus on design, implementation and evaluation of the Paramedics Providing Palliative Care at Home Program.

18 March 2025, 17.00-18.30 CET

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Speakers:

Bernard Foëx - UK

Edward O'Brian - Wales, UK

Georgina Murphy-Jones - London, UK

More information is coming soon.

4 February 2025, 9-10.30 CET

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The first session of the series will introduce the newly formed EAPC Task Force on Palliative Care & Emergency Medical Services, and present the current situation and ongoing initiatives in the Czech Republic and Germany. Martin Neukirchen and Eva Diehl-Wiesenecker will discuss key topics currently being addressed by the German palliative and emergency care working group. These include the development of a national curriculum on palliative care for paramedics and emergency care physicians, efforts to create a standardised emergency card with therapy goals and limitations, and strategies to integrate palliative and emergency care in the amendment to the German Rescue Service Act. David Peřan and Michala Chatrná will present a three-year national project with Czech regional ambulance services, which aims to integrate generalist palliative care into EMS, highlighting key strategies, successes and challenges so far. They will also share some national data on end-of-life patients and EMS in the Czech Republic. 

Host:

Martin Loučka is a psychologist, researcher and educator in palliative care. He is a founder of Center for Palliative Care, a Czech NGO advocating good quality palliative care in the Czech Republic. He is a board member of European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) and a co-chair of the EAPC Task Force on Palliative Care & Emergency Medical Services.

Speakers: 

Martin Neukirchen is Professor for Palliative Care and head of the Department of Palliative Care at University Hospital Duesseldorf. His research interests include the intersection and cooperation between intensive and palliative care.

Eva Diehl-Wiesenecker is a consultant in the Emergency Department at Berlin Charité University Clinic, with interest in palliative care. She works with the EUSEM (European Society for Emergency Medicine) Ethics Committee.

David Peřan is an Advanced Care Paramedic, and a deputy director for quality management and research at Emergency Medical Services of Karlovy Vary Region, Czech Republic. He works in education and training, and is a lecturer at 3rd Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague.

Michala Chatrná is a project manager at Center for Palliative Care, Czech Republic, where she is responsible for a national project which aims at integrating palliative care into ambulance services. 

Registration is now closed.

18 February 2025, 9-10.30 CET

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The second session in the webinar series will take us to Australia and New Zealand. Madeleine Juhrmann will share the findings from her recently completed PhD, where she explored the role of paramedics delivering palliative and end of life care in Australian community-based settings, and developed a national framework suitable for standardising palliative paramedicine practice across the country. She will describe the current focus group study she is leading, which will develop a multidisciplinary implementation strategy for the framework in Australia. Fraser Watson will provide a snapshot of the initiatives being undertaken to support paramedics in New Zealand meet community demand for palliative and end-of-life care. He will discuss clinical guidance, clinical education, pilot projects, and integration with the health system. He will also provide a brief overview of data, and outline some of the challenges and opportunities.

Speakers:

Madeleine Juhrmann is a palliative care and health services researcher, with a clinical, policy and research background in paramedicine, public health and aged care. She is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying (RePaDD). Her research interests include palliative paramedicine, public health approaches to palliative care and reducing avoidable hospital admissions.

Fraser Watson is the Specialist Clinical Lead (Extended Care Paramedic) at Hato Hone St John. He focuses on clinical governance, support and education and his interests lie, among others, in low-acuity and community based models of paramedicine, guideline development and implementation, and palliative and end-of-life care.

Registration is now closed.