Here at the University of Glasgow, School of Interdisciplinary Studies at our Dumfries Campus, the focus on end of life issues is intensifying. Next month our major project on Global Interventions at the end of life will get underway, with a great team of three full-time staff. I am pleased to say that we are now… Continue reading
This week in Kerala, southern India, the first ever student and young people’s palliative care conference is taking place. It is called STUDENTSPALCON 2015. The impetus has come from the ever-resourceful Institute of Palliative Medicine in Kozhikode, and the associated Neighbourhood Networks in Palliative Care. The conference website states: “Critical engagement with the idea of… Continue reading
People in the terminal phase of an illness are cumbersome, annoying, difficult and useless. Cumbersome with their technological bed, commode, armchair, walking frame, crutches, intravenous drips, catheters and drainage bag: there is no room for them at home. Annoying, with their coughing, wheezing, bad smells, bedsores, insomnia, continuous calls and countless needs. Difficult to manage… Continue reading
In a previous post on this blog – “Palliative Care Definitions & Discoveries” I told of what seemed like a discovery to some of us generously described as “pioneers.” We had suddenly realised that palliative care was no more, no less than good clinical care whatever the pathology of the illness or the gender, colour,… Continue reading
One of the more pleasurable academic tasks I have ever undertaken was to edit the letters of Cicely Saunders, in a collection published by Oxford University Press, in 2002. The volume of her selected letters (1959-99) contains some 700 pieces, chosen from over 7,000 to be found among her papers. I continue to enjoy dipping… Continue reading
There is a lot of interest in the outcome of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) right now. This is the exercise that every six years or so, assesses and ranks the quality of research in Britain’s universities – across all institutions and subject areas, using a common rating scale. For each subject area, research… Continue reading
At the end of January 2014 I learned that I had been successful in winning a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities. The new project starts on 1st March 2015 and is focussed on improving our understanding of interventions at the end life. It will take a global perspective and will… Continue reading
It is not uncommon to refer to the United States as the most ‘death denying’ culture in the world. As one wag observed, ‘Americans don’t die, they just under achieve’. Certainly America spends unprecedented amounts on health care in the last year of life – apparently in search of life extension, but often it seems… Continue reading
