On 31 October 2020, the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN) successfully held its first virtual Mandarin Hospice Summit! Organised by the Chinese Special Interest Group, with Dr Fang Chun-Kai as the Chair, the one-day virtual event was well attended by close to 300 participants from around the region.
The virtual summit was held live via Tencent Meeting, a China-based software, to ensure a seamless login for our participants from China. Registration of participants were smooth on the actual day with IT support provided via WeChat.
The summit kickstarted with a speech delivered by the APHN Chair, Associate Professor Cynthia Goh, to welcome the participants. This was followed by a special lecture by Mr Giam Cheong Leong, APHN Executive Director, on the Lien Collaborative for Palliative Care capacity building project, and the announcement of a Train the Trainer programme in China that is in the making.
The rest of the programme continued with invited speakers delivering lectures and round table discussions on palliative care topics specific to the Chinese speaking community. Overall, the programme delivery was smooth and well received by participants.
The feedback given by the participants were kept in Mandarin to retain the original meaning of the comments.
“本次会议内容挺丰富、理论、实践结合得很好。“
“希望通过开放学习的方法，让我们的死亡质量得到更好的提高。”
“愿意来参加APHN 会议的人，都有一个共同的心愿—推动中国的生命关怀事业。面对这个议题，我们需要向海外先行者们学习。”
“谢谢APHN 的论坛，让我们找到阶段性标杆。”
“通过APHN 论坛的学习，才发现中国的安宁疗护事业路途漫漫。有心无力是我最大的体会，现在只能不忘初心，一点点去实践，把国外的先进经验跟本土案例结合起来，形成我们宝贵经验，为以后的安宁疗护事业添砖加瓦！”
The event concluded at 5pm in the evening. To my surprise, majority of the participants had stayed through the full day of the summit! The demand for palliative care education in the local language is still soaring in this part of Asia, and we assured the participants that we would be organising more activities for them in 2021. Many of them are looking forward to it with excitement, and more than half of the participants have subscribed to our social media channel to ensure that they do not miss out on training opportunities in the future! There is still much work to be done, especially in China, so if you are a palliative care professional proficient in Mandarin, and would like to be part of the Chinese Special Interest Group, do write in to APHN (aphn@aphn.org) to indicate your interest and we would be very happy to explore the activities that you can do with us!
Written by: Joyce Chee (APHN Assistant Manager), Edited by: Trudy Giam (APHN Executive)