From September 28 to October 1, 2022, the 14th Congress of the DGP (German Society for Palliative Medicine) will take place in the Congress Centrum Bremen under the motto “Palliative Care – Sailing Hard on the Wind”. Experts want to devote themselves there in the maritime environment of the north to borderline experiences and challenges of palliative care.

Palliative care is more multi-professional than any other field in medicine. The DGP has collectively shaped a specialty that is attracting increasing professional, as well as societal, attention and faces multi-faceted challenges. Not only the Covid 19 pandemic has caused an increased and changed need for professional and voluntary companions as well as treaters in palliative care. The cooperation with other disciplines with the intention of improving the quality of care and the quality of life of patients and their relatives has already led to new and expanded tasks. At the same time, the ethical controversies of the pandemic and the heated euthanasia debate show the high demands on professional and ethical competence and positioning. This affects the quality and quantity of work and underscores the need to evaluate (in-) acceptable borderline experiences and potentially changing burdens and needs of palliative care treatment teams.

Increasing demands also mean increasing educational requirements for both general and specialized palliative care expertise. In addition, there are structural changes, such as the reformed nursing education (keyword generalistics) and increasingly established modules in medical studies. New ways of teaching now have to be paved and established and should take into account the specifics of multiprofessionality through interprofessional learning concepts.

Science feels bundled these developments and is not seldom confronted with the question: What would be good to know, how can we measure this and what can we expect our patients, their relatives and also the experts to do? There is a fine line between the need for knowledge and ethical and legal limits.

This congress combines exactly these components in its motto “Sailing close to the wind”. Come to Bremen and use the opportunity to exchange ideas across professional groups and disciplines, to engage in discourse, to get to know new perspectives and to let the (professional) wind blow around our noses together in the north.

Source: Preliminary program of the 14th DGP Congress: https://dgp2022.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DGP_Vorprogramm_Kongress_2022_online_2.pdf

Further information: https://dgp2022.de/