Leadership in Palliative Care
Many middle and senior tier clinical roles in palliative care involve leadership tasks and responsibilities. Yet, few clinical undergraduate or even postgraduate programmes include leadership and management skills. This may result in practitioners lacking the necessary knowledge and skills to optimise their role in their organisation.
Leadership skills have begun to be regarded as increasingly essential in palliative care capacity building and there needs to be provision for teaching these skills. Several national courses have incorporated leadership in their curriculum, but also international leadership courses have been developed such as the Leadership Development Initiative (Columbus, Ohio, USA) and the European Palliative Care Academy (EUPCA).
In 2017, the EAPC and EUPCA introduced a leadership award which recognises leadership courses across the world. Therefore, the taskforce’s Delphi study created a directory for leadership courses and elaborated a consensus on core competencies of leadership in palliative care.
The Delphi study has been submitted for publication.
The Task Force is chaired by Professor Sheila Payne, Emeritus Professor at the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University, UK and Professor Raymond Voltz, Director of the Department of Palliative Medicine, University Hospital Cologne, Germany.
