The University of Malaga (UMA) and the Cudeca Foundation keep moving forward in their agreement to bring quality palliative care training to a greater number of university students. These days, both institutions are reaching an agreement to incorporate an online master’s degree into the curricula of the University of Málaga, which will be taught under the name of I Master’s Degree in Palliative Care for People with an Advanced Disease.

UMA is already working on the final details of this new training offer in order to be able to start teaching in the academic year 2021-2022. This training program is added to the two that were already underway: the III Interdisciplinary Master’s Degree in Palliative Care and the II Interdisciplinary University Expert in Palliative Care, which will be repeated next year after the good reception of the previous years.

An article in the newspaper Diario SUR has recently reported on this initiative. As Ángel Bataller, Head of Training and Research at the Cudeca Institute for Studies and Research in Palliative Care, explains, «currently, about 25% of the patients admitted to hospitals are in their last year of life. This is a fact that should give us food for thought. At Cudeca we attend to all the medical needs that a patient has throughout his or her illness, and when we reach the last moment of life is when we have to focus on integral needs. We have to respect people’s autonomy; the patient is the one who decides about his or her own life, to make it as dignified as possible.»

As is the case with the other training courses coordinated by Cudeca, its main characteristic is interdisciplinarity. It is a concept of training in which «the different branches go together, both the socio-health, psychosocial or the whole human being, where there are both spiritual needs and pain treatment,» explains Bataller, who reiterated his thanks to the University, which makes it possible to provide these trainings, with all revenues for the benefit of the work of Cudeca.

«In addition to all the teaching hours of the master’s degree, students are also given the opportunity of completing an internship at Cudeca, in which they work in all the care units, including the inpatient admissions unit, the Day Center, home care and psychosocial care,» says Bataller.