Before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted conventional thinking around death and dying, Death Cafés around the world were encouraging people to reflect on their mortality. Death Cafés are informal social spaces where strangers meet to ‘have a conversation’ about death and dying. They can be organised by anyone, anywhere in the world. With death rates now… Continue reading →
Even at The Lancet When it comes to assisted dying, even one of the world’s leading medical journals can get caught out. It’s curious in this age of ‘precision medicine’, that leading commentators and thought leaders in the medical field can still struggle with crucial terms and definitions about assisted dying. Whatever your views on… Continue reading →
“Death is terrifying”, writes the author Susan Cheever, “…because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time”. Continue reading →
In the summer of 2018, Dr Marian Krawczyk and I co-authored an article about how the various western cultural ‘scripts’ which give meaning to dying might be influenced when assisted dying is made lawful and the very end stages of dying becomes, in essence, an ‘optional’ part of the lifecourse. Our thinking was very much… Continue reading →
Members of the University of Glasgow End of Life Studies Group are collaborating with the ATLANTES Global Observatory of Palliative Care, University of Navarra and the Worldwide Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance, to conduct a third study of the state of palliative care development around the world. Based on data from 2017, the new ‘world… Continue reading →
I started to study palliative care in 2008, motivated by personal reasons. Today there are social media, TV programmes, podcasts, and many other ways to spread the message about the need for palliative care. In 2008 that wasn’t the reality at all. I think the first time I had contact with the Dame Cicely Saunders’… Continue reading →
