Realizing the lack of emphasis and understanding of the importance of palliation in India, CanKids...KidsCan organized its 1^st Pediatric Palliative care workshop in November 2009, which offered an introduction to palliative care for children with chronic illnesses, psychosocial care, communicating with children and their family and ethical issues.

With the guidance of our last workshop, we took several initiatives in our Palliative care project. There was a need now to improve our standards of care and support further and explore the challenges most relevant to working with cancer-affected children in terminal phase & also to come up with more practical solutions required in the field.

Therefore, a 2^nd workshop was organized as a step ahead towards improving our services by building a greater knowledge of current palliative care practices for children suffering from cancer. The specific focus areas were pain management, alleviation of physical symptoms and more proficient communication skills for the team. The Workshop was provided by Dr Anjay Babu Sadasivan, CanKids Pediatric Palliative Care Physician & Palliative care consultant - GCCI, New Delhi. He was supported by Dr. Amita Mahajan, Senior consultant & Pediatric Oncologist - Apollo Hospital & Cankids Vice president, Technical and Dr Sindhu Nair, Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician , Global Cancer Concern India.


The key points of the discussion included the basic principles of pediatric palliative care, the importance for us as Support Group to understand the cancer terms and topics, ways of dealing with communications issues in palliative care, Symptom Management (Nutrition/Hygiene/Psychological) and advocacy measures for pain management.

The first workshop was a primary understanding of the issues involved in the field of pediatric palliative care. This 2^nd capacity building workshop was a level up, in that, it imparted training on how to cater to those issues discussed in the first workshop. It was an attempt to equip the caregivers with more effective in hand practical methods of providing physical and psychological care to the children and their families facing the last stage of cancer. With the simple language, illustrative presentations and real case studies used, the effort became all the more fruitful.

From here on, in the quest to improve their standard of support services, the Cankids team of caregivers now moves into the action-field with some first hand tips from renowned professionals. Hopefully, the focus will gradually shift towards the needs of the care-givers themselves by the time of the next workshop.