The proposed Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults [Scotland] Bill launched on Thursday 28th March 2024. The Bill proposes allowing terminally ill people over the age of 16 the right to request lethal medication from a doctor which they would self-administer to bring an immediate end to their own life at a time and place of their choosing.… Continue reading →
In March 2024, the summative findings paper for the ESRC-funded ‘Dying in the Margins’ study was published in Social Science & Medicine – Qualitative Research in Health. Our visual methods study shed light on the challenges of home dying in the context of financial hardship and deprivation in the UK. Utilising photovoice, professional documentary photography… Continue reading →
To coincide with the display of the ‘Cost of Dying’ exhibition at the Scottish Parliament (14th – 16th November 2023), we present our final digital story; “Frank’s Story”. Key themes in Frank’s story are the physical inaccessibility of the home affecting care provision, financial struggles in caring for a terminally ill family member, and the… Continue reading →
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 →
The authors of this blog have both been involved in palliative care for over a decade, albeit for different reasons. Claire Morris is a global palliative care advocate within a palliative care international non-governmental organisation and Lucy Watts has been accessing palliative care services since she was 17 years old as a result of a rare,… 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 →
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 →
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 →
