Abstract
Palliative care services have been available within the UAE since 2007 but are limited to a small number of healthcare institutions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and remain closely affiliated with oncology services. The benefits of palliative care for both patients and their families are now clearly established with a growing evidence base, and although, as a medical specialty, palliative care is very much in its infancy in the UAE, there is a growing recognition of the value and the need for palliative care practitioners. While the general population’s expectation of what modern medicine is able to provide is constantly being raised, this is also tempered by an increasing awareness of the relevance of quality of life, particularly for patients approaching the end of life. Pain remains the symptom most commonly associated with suffering and a worse quality of life, and over the past few years, access to opioid analgesics has improved dramatically although there still remain challenges to prescribing in the outpatient setting and for patients who wish to have end-of-life care at home. In this chapter, we introduce the concept of palliative care and discuss the unique challenges with provision of palliative care and recommendations for the future.
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Nijhawan, N.A., Al-Shamsi, H.O. (2021). Palliative Care in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In: Laher, I. (eds) Handbook of Healthcare in the Arab World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74365-3_102-1
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