We are all aware of the headlines about the impact of government austerity measures on communities up and down the UK. But what impact has austerity had on people’s experiences of dying and, specifically, their ability to die in their own home? What is it like to be facing death in materially constrained circumstances in… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
