19. DAPPLE at the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) 2025

From 29-31 May, the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) held their 19th World Congress in Helsinki in Finland with the theme “Ready for the future”. I was lucky enough to go, so let me tell you a little bit about it.

On the 28 May I made my way to Helsinki. Travelling involved a lot of chaos as I locked myself out of my flat with my passport inside and ended up missing my flight. A lot of phone calls to Irene and university travel agents later, I was on a plane and back on track – Irene was the best boss, keeping calm, and helped me through my travel panic. Not off to a great start..

The conference started with the opening ceremony, welcoming all conference attendees. I was actually giving a plenary presentation during the ceremony as I won an EAPC award. The award is called the Early Researcher Award, and I got it for my work on palliative care, learning disability, and Conversation Analysis.

I still cannot believe I managed to present in front of so many people (2000!) on a big stage with my face on the biggest screen I have ever seen. I could feel my heart jumping out of my chest! Such a big experience. I am so grateful for the award and for all the kind words I received throughout the conference.

After a coffee break, it was time for DAPPLE! We had a DAPPLE poster at the conference.

But our DAPPLE abstract was also amongst the highest scoring ones, which meant we got to do a poster discussion session. That involved doing a very short (2 minutes!) presentation of your poster, and then you had 5 minutes for questions afterwards.

I got some great questions. People were asking about what factors we were looking at in our national database analysis, where we are looking at electronic health records. They also asked us about the problems with not everyone with a learning disability being registered as having a learning disability on their record. This is indeed a problem we have been talking about a lot. The national database analysis is coming together nicely, and we cannot wait to share the findings with you soon!

Everyone could also see our DAPPLE poster printed, hanging in the poster exhibition area. We got a nice spot as we were part of a poster discussion session – there were more than 900 posters at the conference!

On the second day I was presenting at the Junior Forum meeting as I won the Early Researcher Award. On the last day, I was presenting on The Victoria & Stuart Project, another project where we created a toolkit of approaches and resources for end-of-life care planning with people with a learning disability.

After three conference days and four presentations, I was knackered and ready for some time off. Despite the hectic start, I really enjoyed the conference. A lot of people were interested in the work I presented. I am so grateful that I was able to go and lucky to have four opportunities to speak about palliative care and people with a learning disability. One thing I was struck by was that learning disability was almost absent from this year’s programme. Let’s change that for next year’s conference in Prague!

Written by Andrea Bruun, Research Fellow, Kingston University London