Palliative care personnel and services: a national survey in Thailand 2012

Research on palliative care services in Thailand is incomplete. We conducted a countrywide cross-sectional postal survey to update the situation. We approached hospitals and asked them to respond to a questionnaire. The overall response rate of government hospitals was 61 percent (537 of 882 hospitals). Of these, 59 percent reported that they had personnel trained in palliative care; the majority had received less than a week of such training. In all, 60 percent of the hospitals reported that they offered palliative care services, but 25 percent of these services were delivered by staff who had no palliative care training. The criteria of having at least one trained doctor and nurse on staff was met by 17 percent of the hospitals. Only seven hospitals, most of them associated with medical schools, employed both a doctor and a nurse who had been trained in palliative care for one month or more; these professionals mainly provided hospital and home palliative care team services. Our survey reveals the lack of both health care personnel fully trained in palliative care and specialist palliative care services in Thailand.