My name is Franklin S. Santos, I am a geriatric doctor, and 11 years ago I started working in teaching, research and assistance in the areas of Thanatology and Palliative Care in Brazil. Since then, I have had the opportunity to organise courses and interdisciplinary books that address these issues. These books became a reference… Continue reading
What does a mother say to her six year old when asked the question no mother wants to hear? How do parents begin to tell their children that their mother has an illness that is life-limiting? Where do parents get help, support and guidance when they are diagnosed with an illness that is potentially life-limiting?… Continue reading
One of the most fundamental ways we show love and connection is through touch. This behaviour is so central to our understanding of what it means to be in relationship with another person that visual representations of touch have become one of the most common visual forms of ‘shorthand’ to indicate compassionate caring, including at… Continue reading
One of the greatest challenges facing the NHS, in this its 70th anniversary year, is the care of ageing and increasingly frail older people. End of life care is not something that we as doctors seem to want to talk about, which means that when patients are admitted as an emergency to hospital the default… Continue reading
Kerala’s community model for palliative care has sustained attention in global palliative care discourse, as an alternative, resource-effective form of organizing. What distinguishes the community model from professional-centric models such as hospices and hospitals, is that the community volunteers serve as the anchor in coordinating ‘total-care’ – i.e., medical, social, financial support and rehabilitation –… Continue reading
One of Dame Cicely Saunders’ most enduring legacies is the importance of being present, of witnessing, at the end of life. Academic witnessing at the margins of life and death can require balancing an intense intimacy with simultaneously gaining enough distance to ‘see’ significant or representative broader concepts. What does this mean for us as… Continue reading
Cicely Saunders once stated that ‘suffering is only intolerable when nobody cares’. Yet suffering is a broad concept with many aspects. Members from the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group recently attended a two-day philosophy conference entitled ‘Suffering and Autonomy at the End of Life’. Speakers came from a range of academic disciplines – including… Continue reading
In recent times I have been struck by the widespread use of the term ‘compassion’. It is being colonized by many groups, organisations and discourses – sometimes with rather opposing purposes. Widely used by the supporters of palliative care, it has also been adopted by those that promote assisted dying. It is found in the… Continue reading
