At the end of April, the need for health care for infected products is expected to be highest in the Stockholm region.

If the patients are too poor to be helped by intensive care or if the places in the hospitals simply run out, patients will die in their homes or group homes.

In order to prepare for such a situation, the Stockholm region, like other regions and municipalities in the country, has developed a web education in palliative care.

Relieve severe symptoms

The instructional videos, located on the Palliative Knowledge Center's website, explain how doctors and nurses can relieve severe symptoms of covid-19. These include, among other things, which drugs and dosages are appropriate for, for example, shortness of breath, heart failure, pain and anxiety.

This is the first time the region is making such a targeted response to a disease course.

- We address all staff. We think it is good if everyone raises their skills to be able to provide good care, ”says Christoffer Bernsköld, Head of Unit at the Health and Medical Administration in the Stockholm region.

Will corona patients who die in their homes be able to receive good nursing care?

- Yes, we already have patients who are palliative and end their lives in a dignified way in their homes and this education is a way to increase competence so that it will continue to be so.

Important to create calm

Peter Strang is a professor of palliative medicine and has worked with dying patients for 40 years. His most important tip to the healthcare staff is to create a calm despite the difficult situation.

- If you as a healthcare professional are disturbed and worried, the patient and relatives will be infected by the stress. Then it can be even more difficult to breathe for a patient with corona, says Peter Strang.

How difficult is the death process for those who die in covid-19?

- There is almost no research data yet, but through medical acquaintances I have heard that it is often similar to the way one dies in a normal pneumonia. This means that in most cases there will be moderate symptoms that we are used to relieving.

- If there are, presumably, some people who have very troublesome symptoms even though we have given soothing drugs, then we can also give sedative preparations that give a lowering of consciousness that makes you not feel the symptoms. So we have different tricks to take, says Peter Strang.