Pós-Graduação em Cuidados Paliativos

Postgraduate Degree in Palliative Care

The Postgraduate Degree in Palliative Care aims to respond to the need to provide health professionals with advanced theoretical and practical training in palliative care (PC), as outlined in the Strategic Plan for the Development of Palliative Care 2021-2022. This plan emphasizes the need to strengthen pre- and postgraduate education in PC for all health professionals and to strengthen the creation of PC advisory teams.

The program, approved by the Scientific Board on 14 May 2021, integrates and gives continuity to the postgraduate training offer of the Nursing School of Coimbra. It follows the guidelines of the Portuguese Nursing Regulator (Ordem dos Enfermeiros)  for postgraduate training in PC and the development of skills in the area of nursing care delivery to palliative patients.

With this project, the School intends to continue to provide health care units with an increasing number of health professionals with advanced training to effectively meet the different, specific, and complex needs of the Palliative Patient and family/caregivers. As advocated by the United Nations Agenda 2030, all governments should develop and implement PC policies to cover the needs of those who need support in PC. In addition to adequate policies and the implementation of PC services, the training of health professionals is one of the crucial aspects of the effectiveness of this care.

This program has 34 mandatory ECTS and allows students to progress in their studies because these ECTS can be entirely credited to the Master’s Degree in Medical-Surgical Nursing in the area of Palliative Care Nursing. This Master’s program has already obtained a favorable opinion from the Portuguese Nursing Regulator (Ordem dos Enfermeiros) for the attribution of the title of Nurse Specialist in Medical-Surgical Nursing in the area of Palliative Care Nursing.

This program aims to contribute to students’ training in care design, clinical decision-making, intervention, and assessment of care and simultaneously make them facilitators of the change processes so that the final product translates into high-quality health care for citizens.

Currently, health care and the contexts in which it occurs are increasingly complex. The citizens using health services tend to be more vulnerable due to their age because they are in the final stages of an evolving chronic disease process or have less or insufficient family support. The need for an effective response to the greater complexity of care means that nurses must develop skills to act as experts, thus responding to the needs of the person/family/caregivers and the evolving health and social system.

The curricular structure and development of the postgraduate program’s study plan are based on the principles and guidelines inscribed in the legislation that regulates higher education, the nursing career, and postgraduate training in nursing.

By attending the program, students are expected to assimilate and integrate technical, scientific, and relational knowledge. This will enable them, as previously mentioned, to intervene in a qualified way with people and their families/caregivers who are experiencing the complex processes of chronic disease evolution with limited prognosis or life-threatening.

The descriptive plan presented here aims to systematize the information and documents that guide the operation of the postgraduate program. As such, it is organized into four chapters.