About education
Palliative care is a relatively new discipline in our region. Given that there is a lot of misunderstanding both in the public and among professionals about what is and what is not palliative care, the Center for palliative care and palliative medicine BELhospice has seen the education of professionals in this area as one of its priorities since its foundation.
The first Palliative Care School was held in October 2004 in Arilje. Since then, schools and accredited training programs for various professionals have been held every year, both in our educational center “Prue Dufour” in Belgrade and throughout Serbia.
In the period from 2011 to 2014, the BELhospice center was a member of the international consortium, which implemented the project of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia “Development of palliative care in Serbia”.
One of the priorities of this project was the education of doctors, nurses, and social workers employed in palliative care services.
All courses that were conducted during this project (96 in total) were accredited through the BELhospice center, and doctors employed at the Center participated as lecturers in their realization, so that during the duration of the project, BELhospice did not organize independent courses. After the completion of the project, BELhospice continued with its educational activities.
All these years, continuously, in addition to educational courses, the Alumni Club has been organized. Members of our Alumni Club are all professionals who attended one of our courses and for them attendance at professional meetings is free. The topics at these expert meetings are relevant to palliative care.
From 2012 until today, the BELhospice center has educated over 300 candidates for volunteering in our organization, professionally trained dozens of social work and psychology students in practice, and our lecturers have presented topics in the field of palliative care to students at various faculties and universities throughout Serbia.
Since 2018, the BELhospice center has been implementing accredited training for professionals from the Social Protection System.