In a new article published in July 2022 in Health Policy, Professor David Clark, Anthony Bell and myself have taken a critical look at the commonly held presumption that future developments in palliative care are heavily dependent on the precondition of ‘policy’. This belief has become fixed in the field over the past 20 years in relation to a range… Continue reading
When I arrived at the beginning of September 2021, the summer was still lingering. I immediately fell in love with Crichton Campus, ‘a place to breathe’, as displayed on the welcome sign. Experiencing the beautiful parkland estate surrounding the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, the home of the End of Life Studies Group, has added an… Continue reading
‘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
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds. That’s how long an officer kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck resulting in his death from asphyxiation. In eulogizing Floyd, Reverend Al Sharpton said, “Since four hundred and one years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee… Continue reading
In December we published the overall results from the third ‘world map’ of palliative care development, showing that only a small proportion of the global population, mostly in the global North, live in countries with the most advanced provision of palliative care. We can now present our assessment of global levels of children’s palliative care… Continue reading
A yellow heart has been widely shared across the UK during lockdown, giving many bereaved families a meaningful opportunity to visibly share their loss and grief. Originating from a single bereaved family, this simple and powerful movement has showcased one of many new forms of grieving developed during the time of Covid-19. In the face… Continue reading
The world stopped making sense when my sister died. She wasn’t supposed to die young, with a small child, most of her life still to be lived – it was an unprecedented event. In order to try and find meaning to my inchoate grief, I began to explore others’ stories and experiences with dying and… Continue reading
TS Eliot’s chilling start to The Waste Land has deep resonance in the time of COVID-19. We seem to be exactly in that instant when ‘the dead tree gives no shelter’, when ‘I was neither living nor dead’, and when ‘He who was living is now dead’[i]. The mere 30 days of April have felt… Continue reading
