Delivering palliative care in the post-pandemic era

The COVID-19 pandemic has left a trail of pain and suffering for health professionals, people who were affected by the virus and survived, bereaved families and, probably, children born during the pandemic. It has overwhelmed weak healthcare systems (Radbruch et al, 2020, torn up communities and has had a devastating impact on individual families. Although the restrictions have been necessary, they have increased isolation among patients and their families. For example, people have died without their loved ones by their side. Most people who died from COVID-19 were in hospitals, nursing and care homes or hospices, again increasing the isolation experienced in death. Any care given after the pandemic ends should consider such death experiences in terms of the impact of the lack of bereavement rituals on the bereaved.

Some sections of the healthcare system were not used to witnessing deaths, but the pandemic changed all that. At the beginning of lockdown in the UK, I recall joining my local trust to train staff working in mental health services about death and dying and sharing knowledge and skills regarding end-of-life care. It would have been ideal to have provided basic palliative care education and training to all health professionals well before the pandemic. Such training could have been useful not only for nursing students but all healthcare students, including medical students. It is also important to offer refresher training workshops in palliative care for generalist health professionals.