Sandy Fraser, The Open University I’m 55 years old and have just acquired a long-term health condition. It might be a quite a few years before I acquire another health condition, still longer before I die. Life expectancy for men and women continues to increase but so has the proportion of life spent living with… Continue reading
Since arriving in Dumfries, I’ve been daily graced by a generous view of the local cemetery just across from a park suffocating with screaming, hyperactive children. At first sight, I was struck by how unassumingly picturesque it was—the cemetery sprawls across the side of a hill, rows of stone teeth unnervingly still against swaying trees,… Continue reading
A United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Dying and Seriously Ill could improve global standards for all people at the end of life, proposes Sharon Young of Kingston University. End of life care provision varies widely throughout the world. Standards of care available to the dying and seriously ill depend upon the… Continue reading
Two of the most influential right-to-die campaigners in the UK, Debbie Purdy and Tony Nicklinson, died after voluntarily refusing food and fluid, as well as refusing antibiotics. This sparked my interest in this method of suicide as a natural extension of my research into debates around assisted suicide (Richards 2012; Richards 2014). It was reported in the press that… Continue reading
Dame Cicely Saunders died at St Christopher’s Hospice on 14 July 2005, at the age of 87. This is an interview I recorded with her just a few months earlier. I first met Dame Cicely in 1995 and over the next decade we worked together on various projects. She was a keen supporter of my work… Continue reading
These are important times for palliative and end of life care in Scotland, and with an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into palliative care we are all eager to see what the outcomes will be. But first we must all play our part. I am already involved as the Consulting Editor in the production of the Scottish… Continue reading
The University of Glasgow awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science to Derek Doyle, one of the pioneers of modern palliative care, in July 2014. Since then Dr Doyle has been a popular and regular contributor to our blog. Here he blogs about the origins of palliative medicine as a specialty. Some readers may… Continue reading
In this short video presentation I discuss what we know about ways to identify people who are in the last year of their life or who might have palliative care needs. I start by setting out the global context, showing how many people in the world currently die every year, and explaining why this is… Continue reading
