Teaching Palliative Care Across Cultures: The Singapore Experience

Palliative care is a growing area of practice throughout the world and its promotion relies on adequately trained health care professionals. However, there are only a limited number of postgraduate academic courses or clinical training opportunities available, especially in resource challenged areas of the Asia Pacific region. This article outlines a creative endeavour between Flinders University, Adelaide Australia, the Singapore National Cancer Centre and the Asia Pacific Hospice and Palliative Care Network to provide an educational opportunity for students from the region. The strengths of the programme include its strong theoretical and evidenced-based framework, its multidisciplinary inclusiveness and its innovative and interactive teaching style. The main teaching challenge for the teaching team is to deliver culturally appropriate curricula to students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This postgraduate programme is an important initiative for the region and for the development of future leaders and pioneers in the discipline.