Cuidados paliativos: uma proposta para Portugal

The palliative care is considered, nowadays, a human right. In this point of view the implementation of the same ones should respect a strategy and and not to a disorderly distribution of resources. Any strategy has as a starting point an assessment of needs, we can estimate when we can’t get the real information. Using the Portuguese demographic data relative to the year of 2007, published by Statistics National Institute, we obtained that on that year about 62000 patients they had need of palliative care, they will be necessary 133 teams of palliative care home, constituted by 266 doctors and 465 nurses; 102 teams of hospital support that include 204 doctors and 357 nurses; 1062 beds distributed by different typologies of resources, 319 (28 units) in institutions of acute patients, 531 (46 units) in for chronic patients, for which it needs around 200 doctors and 490 nurses / day. The remaining needs of beds can be resolved in nursing-homes. We are far from the goal, but this estimate is as a first step towards developing an integrated plan with interventions in the short, medium and long term in order to respond broadly and equitably to the needs of palliative patients in all regions the country.