Published on: August 16, 2007

Thanks to the initiative of Dr Vivek Khemka from New Jersey, Pallium India and the Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care (EPEC) program at Northwestern University, Chicago collaborated to “Indianise” the EPEC curriculum, bringing in the socio-cultural and medical adaptations that are necessary to use it for palliative care education in India. 15 trigger video tapes were made afresh and all powerpoint and word documents were modified appropriately. The curriculum now has 21 modules.

With funding provided by Lance Armstrong Foundation, a trial run of the EPEC-India curriculum was done at Sree Ramachandra Medical College (SRMC, a deemed university) in Chennai from the 16th to 18th August 2007. The chancellor and the vice chancellor of the University and Dr Sukdev Nayak, the president of Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) were among the dignitaries who spoke at the opening of the program. Dr Linda Emanuel (Director, EPEC), Dr Vivek Khemka (New Jersey) and Dr M.R.Rajagopal (Trivandrum) formed the core group and Dr Republica Sreedhar was the organising secretary. In addition to the core group, the faculty included several leading palliative care teachers from India including Dr Raj Warrier (Vice chancellor, MAHE, Manipal), Dr Reena George (CMC,Vellore), Dr Maryanne Muckaden (TMH, Mumbai), Dr Gayatri Palat (MNJIO, Hyderabad), Dr Ram Rajagopalan (Chennai), Dr Mallika Tiruvadanan (Chennai), Dr Anjum Khan Joad (Jaipur), Dr Vijay Bhaskar Kandula (Bangalore) and Dr Suresh Reddy (Houston, Texas).

The EPEC-India curriculum will be made available to any institution that is willing to use it for a four weeks’ training program in palliative care, free of cost.