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A new approach to suffering in life-limiting illness: Total pain, the brain-gut axis, and the human microbiome

Published on: May 1, 2019 Author: Marian Krawczyk 1 Comment

People with life-limiting illnesses report exceptionally high rates of psychosocial and existential suffering in conjunction with bodily pain. Cicely Saunders famously conceptualized this cumulative distress as ‘total pain’. As you may already know, we’re pretty interested in total pain around here. Professor David Clark has written extensively about it (see here for an overview), and… Continue reading →

End of life issues in Japan and the UK: the Mitori Project blossoms

Published on: April 12, 2019 Author: David Clark 1 Comment

When our Japanese colleagues arrived in Scotland in early spring for the launch of a new collaborative research project, I was delighted to see the interest they took in the cherry blossom that was starting to appear around our Dumfries campus. As our week together unfolded, the beauty of the trees appeared to match the… Continue reading →

My PhD Journey

Published on: March 18, 2019 Author: Guest Author Leave a comment

By Stephen Greenhalgh For the last 13 years I have been working as the Chief Executive of St Catherine’s Hospice in Lancashire. Having had a varied career prior to that in the Army, Church of England, RAF, NHS and Local Government the hospice role came as an unexpected turn in the road and yet, from… Continue reading →

Palliative care in Southern Brazil: Cicely Saunders, legacy, and lighthouse

I started to study palliative care in 2008, motivated by personal reasons. Today there are social media, TV programmes, podcasts, and many other ways to spread the message about the need for palliative care. In 2008 that wasn’t the reality at all. I think the first time I had contact with the Dame Cicely Saunders’… Continue reading →

My encounter with community based palliative care in Kerala

Published on: March 6, 2019 Author: Gitte Koksvik 1 Comment

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 →

New Beginnings: on a PhD journey via Megabus

Published on: February 28, 2019 Author: clairemorris1 Leave a comment

By Claire Morris As I start my part time distance PhD with Glasgow End of Life Studies Group, at the forefront of my mind are the practical and social implications of this life change and the possibilities for the five years ahead. Transitioning to remote part-time study has not been too challenging and I am… Continue reading →

Podcast – Evaluating Community Palliative Care in Kerala, India

Published on: February 22, 2019 Author: Amy McCreadie 1 Comment

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 case of palliative care and public health

Published on: February 21, 2019 Author: Sandy Whitelaw Leave a comment

Dr Sandy Whitelaw in front of a stone building

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 →