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
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
Reflections of a Hospice CEO on the emerging COVID-19 crisis Toiling up the knoll on brittle ground frost we clambered over a creaking stile to be rewarded by the sun glistening on Windermere set against a backdrop of distant snowclad fells. Our short walk had brought a welcome opportunity to reflect during our annual board… Continue reading
