The Lien Centre for Palliative Care will be the newest addition to the three-year-old Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, the largest public-sector hospital in Singapore, officials announced March 18.
The Centre will be the first research facility on palliative care in Asia and is sponsored by the Lien Foundation, the Singapore government, the National Cancer Centre Singapore and Singapore Health Services. It will focus on collecting information and data related to the needs of people in the last years of their lives, Centre Director Dr. Cynthia Goh wrote in an e-mail from Singapore.
Palliative care focuses on delaying the symptoms of diseases and improving quality of life for diagnosed patients, rather than solely searching for a cure or aiming to halt a disease's progress.
The idea for the Centre-which will be owned and managed by Duke-NUS GMS-was conceived two years ago by Singaporean philanthropic group the Lien Foundation, Goh said. The foundation dedicated $7.5 million over five years to the Centre that will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Singapore government.
"The Centre will tap on the research capabilities of Duke-NUS through Duke University's established internationally renowned end-of-life and palliative care research programs, with active involvement and support from the National Cancer Centre Singapore and Singapore Health Services," a press release announcing the partnership reads.
Goh added that the Centre will focus on identifying the cultural differences and special needs of Singaporean patients.
"We have based much of our models and assumptions on Western practices," Goh said. "But we realize that there are many cultural differences, even between the different races, religious beliefs and cultures within Singapore itself."
The Centre will study how to take better care of the 16,000 people of the country's population of 4 million who die each year, said Dr. James Tulsky, director of the Center for Palliative Care in Durham and professor of medicine at the Duke Medical Center.
Most Asian countries, like Singapore, have concentrated only on responding to the immediate medical needs of its palliative patients, Goh said. In order to improve their care, research must be conducted to address the mental, emotional and familial needs of the aging patients.
Goh said she has generated several ideas with other researchers about how best to study the needs of these patients.
"One of the ways is to do a follow-back study of the population which has died, and see where people die, in what circumstances, their usage of health resources such as hospitalization and use of hospice services [and] interviews of their families about their experiences," she said.
Goh noted that she plans to bring professors from the Duke Medical School in Durham to teach at the Duke-NUS Medical School.
"We hope to involve the new medical school more with the community and to supplement hard scientific knowledge with soft skills, learning to listen to our patients, to show commitment and to provide hope," she said.
Worldwide, little is known about the needs of terminally ill patients, Tulsky said. Palliative care is a relatively new medical field and centers have opened only in the past five to 10 years.
Although approximately 70 percent of terminally ill patients in Singapore do not receive hospice palliative care, the large percentage is not unique to Singapore or Asia in general, he added.
Goh said she hopes the opening of the Centre in Singapore will prompt the foundation of research centers elsewhere to look at different local palliative needs.
"I hope [the Lien Centre] will be a center of excellence for research and education in palliative care, and become the catalyst for a research culture among palliative care workers," she said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.