Inclusion of Palliative Care in Indian Undergraduate Physiotherapy Curriculum-course Guidelines and Content

According to the guidelines published by the WHO in 2010, palliative care has been defined as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual." Intervention provided as a part of the palliative care has to be by health professionals who strictly work as a part of the multidisciplinary team and have been specifically trained to an optimal level of competency in the field. Two key problem areas in palliative care which a physiotherapist deals with are poor physical function and pain. This article deals with the following issues: (1) What is palliative care education and its importance? (2) Current scenario of palliative care in medical and allied fields internationally. (3) Current scenario of palliative care education in medical and allied fields in India. (4) Proposed curriculum guidelines for palliative care in physiotherapy.