In summer 2018 I spotted a call from the Economic and Social Research Council seeking proposals to build collaboration between researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom, with no constraints on the subject matter. It looked an interesting opportunity. I quickly reached out to my Japanese colleague the philosopher Hirobumi Takenouchi and within a few… Continue reading
The compassionate world of palliative care is currently going through what one activist has called ‘a winter of discontent’. In a field where a sense of shared and pioneering purpose has long driven development, a measure of disagreement has broken out. The major advocacy and professional societies in palliative care are lining up on opposite… Continue reading
Cicely Saunders was a great writer of letters. Indefatigable in her correspondence, she was equally happy dashing off the briefest of newsy notes, or setting out several pages of detailed text, full of insight and reflection. My acquaintance with her letters, built up over many years, was invaluable to me as I was writing her… Continue reading
Montreal is an amazing, diverse city, rich in heritage and culture. It is also a city of contradictions – a paradox. It is city built on a river and one of the most important ports in Canada and yet it’s almost 1,000 miles from the sea! On first viewing Montreal is also clearly a North… Continue reading
I recall learning of Cicely Saunders’ death in July 2005. It was morning in the Pacific Northwest and I was planning my day of home visits with hospice patients and families. I had greatly admired the woman who created and embodied an approach to care for dying that acknowledged the whole person as they were… Continue reading
One of the greatest challenges facing the NHS, in this its 70th anniversary year, is the care of ageing and increasingly frail older people. End of life care is not something that we as doctors seem to want to talk about, which means that when patients are admitted as an emergency to hospital the default… Continue reading
Kerala’s community model for palliative care has sustained attention in global palliative care discourse, as an alternative, resource-effective form of organizing. What distinguishes the community model from professional-centric models such as hospices and hospitals, is that the community volunteers serve as the anchor in coordinating ‘total-care’ – i.e., medical, social, financial support and rehabilitation –… Continue reading
Suffering and pain present both practical and theoretical problems. This might be surprising. Having long faced the problem of pain, we might have expected it, by now, to be solved. Pain treatment, however, remains woefully inadequate. Chronic pain is not only often incurable and difficult to manage, it is proliferating. Pain treatment and management are… Continue reading
