Palliative care is aimed at reducing and eliminating the disturbing symptoms that reduce the quality of life of the patient struggling with an incurable disease. In recent years, palliative care has been used by hospitals, care centers and even private institutions for palliative care have started to be opened in our country. Although our students can do internships in health institutions that use palliative care technique in our district, they put simple treatment methods and applications into practice. This situation causes our students to be deficient and weak in the field of palliative care. A total of 20 of our students have done their 3-week Palliative Care in Approach to the Painful Patient internship in specialist health institutions in Europe, enabling them to strengthen their professional equipment and gain practical professional skills in palliative care. Our teachers, who received health services in our project, attended a one-week on-the-job training. Our teachers expanded their professional knowledge by participating in on-the-job trainings with the employees of our overseas partners, by seeing the methods and techniques used by these enterprises for patient and elderly care, by making examinations and observations.
Our school started its education life in Çiğli, one of the cute districts of İzmir, in the 1990-1991 academic year. In our country, the understanding of palliative care has started to develop in recent years, hospitals, care centers have started to be used and even private institutions for palliative care have started to be opened. Therefore, by carrying out the Palliative Care Internship in the Approach to the Painful Patient, we aimed to strengthen the professional equipment of our students and to increase their potential to work in hospitals, health centers and nursing homes in our region and even in our country. As the countries where our students will do internships, countries that have integrated palliative care into the health system and specialized in this field have been selected. We strive to raise our students with high professional competencies, open to self-development, and full self-confidence in both their work and social life. Our project has been carried out in order to meet these needs, to update the professional knowledge and skills of our teachers in line with the developments in the world, and to bring the quality of our vocational education closer to European and world standards.