‘Total Pain’ as the Pain of a Lifetime This post looks at Cicely Saunders’ influential term ‘total pain’ in terms of endings and limits. ‘Total pain’ articulates how pain for someone whose life is ending is a whole overwhelming experience which combines physical, psychological, social and spiritual elements. My own PhD project looks at how… Continue reading
“Death is terrifying”, writes the author Susan Cheever, “…because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time”. Continue reading
We don’t often post pieces of this kind on our blog, but I was so struck by the simplicity of this tribute when I read it, that I asked its writer if we could post it here. Dr Suresh Kumar, a good friend to our group and active collaborator, is well known for his work… Continue reading
I spent a productive week at Dumfries this May working with the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group on our project funded by the Scottish Funding Council on “Assessing the Quality and Outcomes in a Community Form of Palliative Care Delivery in Kerala, India”. In this post, I reflect on the genesis of this project,… Continue reading
Recently, I had the privilege of going to India as part of our project “Creating a framework for assessing community based palliative care in Kerala” There, I was able to attend the Indian Association of Palliative Care’s annual conference and spend a week working alongside Dr. Devi Vijay from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta,… Continue reading
As part of our GCRF Project ‘Evaluating Community Palliative Care in Kerala, India’, the members of the project team gathered in Dumfries in November 2018, at the University of Glasgow School of Interdisciplinary Studies Campus, to kick off this new project with a series of workshops discussing strategy, research methods, and objectives for the project. As… Continue reading
The eventual publication of our paper ‘Palliative care and public health: an asymmetrical relationship?’ in Palliative Care: Research and Treatment offers a chance to reflect on what ended up being a drawn out and rather tortuous academic process. Over two years ago, David Clark and I started to talk and write about the engagement between ‘palliative care’… Continue reading
David Clark, University of Glasgow For the first time ever, one of Britain’s 200 independent hospices has closed its doors. St Clare’s in Jarrow near Newcastle had been serving its community in the north east of England for 30 years, raising most of its annual costs of £2.2m from local charitable giving. But after a… Continue reading
