Palliative Care In Portugal - From Intention To Reality, What is Yet to Be Accomplished

Objectives: This article focuses on exploring the evolution of Palliative Care in Portugal. Ten years after the approval of its Basic Law, the aim was to investigate the quality of the path followed and the guidelines that could promote its development. Thus, this study sought to identify a) the goals of the current members of parliament concerning Palliative Care, b) the major priorities that should guide the development of Palliative Care in the coming decade, c) the facilitating or hindering factors to accelerating the process, and d) to propose consensually agreed measures for an integral development of Palliative Care within the health system. Methods Qualitative data analysis was performed from the reading of literature and interviews conducted via Zoom with several intentionally chosen participants, leading to the creation of a Focus Group. The NVivo® 10 was used for data processing and categorisation. Results Three key themes emerged concerning the current status of palliative care: the policymakers, the technicians, and the society. This first line of structuring is explained by a second set of categories, namely, a) knowledge about palliative care; b) Palliative care organisation from the policymakers’ perspective. In the technicians' domain: a) knowledge about palliative care, b) clinical training, and c) medical specialty. Finally, in society: a) knowledge about palliative care. Significance of the Results Advancing general education, increasing qualitative training for the different health professionals, reformulating laws supporting them, promoting flexibility of the implementation methodologies, and establishing medical specialty, are crucial to achieving the proposed goal.