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
People with life-limiting illnesses report exceptionally high rates of psychosocial and existential suffering in conjunction with bodily pain. Cicely Saunders famously conceptualized this cumulative distress as ‘total pain’. As you may already know, we’re pretty interested in total pain around here. Professor David Clark has written extensively about it (see here for an overview), and… Continue reading
In January 2012 I began studying for a cross-disciplinary PhD supervised by David Clark and Sandy Whitelaw from the End of Life Studies Team at the University of Glasgow’s Dumfries Campus. My thesis, entitled ‘The Treatment of Pain in India: power and practice’, was borne from the notion that global health improvement initiatives, despite being… Continue reading
We have very few global landmarks in the evolution of palliative care. So when a new one comes along it is important to take note, to reflect, and to consider the implications. The report of the Lancet Commission on Pain and Palliative Care is such a work. I was fortunate to be asked to join… Continue reading
75% of the world’s population have no – or inadequate – access to controlled medicines for pain relief. This means that, for many people, a diagnosis of a serious illness such as cancer brings not only a traumatic confrontation with mortality, but also the fear – and reality – of excruciating pain. Pain serves the evolutionary… Continue reading
In a briefing note published in 2009, the World Health Organization estimated ‘that 5 billion people… have no or insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain’ . Much of the dialogue related to this lack of access has focused on the availability of the opioid drug morphine, but despite several high profile… Continue reading
