Ambulance staff are responding to the needs of dying patients by taking them to hospital because of a lack of alternative community-based forms of care and limited access to patient information, according to a paper published in Palliative Medicine. The study, a sociological analysis of the experiences of ambulance staff attending to patients close to […]
Patient and public involvement – a matter of life and death
Blog by Dr Mila Petrova, Cambridge Palliative and End of Life Care Group, Primary Care Unit She was supposed to outlive you What would you do if your 26-year old daughter dies of cancer, in a chaotic ED corridor on a Friday, the child who was supposed to outlive you, the child whom you […]
Support needs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): a new comprehensive framework of the evidence
Thirteen categories of support needs have been described for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), in a comprehensive review of evidence that identifies the full range of support needs for patients with COPD for the first time. The review, by Dr Morag Farquhar (University of East Anglia), Dr Gail Ewing from the Centre for […]
Into the future for end of life care design
The first two years of the five year Marie Curie Design to Care Programme, launched 25th April 2017, brings together experts from palliative care, engineering, design and social sciences to address the complex palliative care needs of the UK’s ageing population. The programme will develop a new approach to designing personalised care for people at […]
Public attitudes towards end-of-life care in progressive neurological illness are conflicted, study reveals
Public attitudes in UK and USA reveal support both for life-sustaining interventions and for measures to enable peaceful death in progressive neurological illness such as dementia, according to a survey carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge. Debate surrounding assisted dying goes to the heart of clinical ethical principles Gemma Clarke The study […]
Questions of life and death
The ambitious seminar series, ‘Images of Care and Dying’, led by Robbie Duschinsky, Stephen Barclay and Emma Wilson (Professor of French Literature and the Visual Arts) began in October 2016 with a discussion of a remarkable documentary at the first seminar. Filmed in a pioneering hospice, The Time to Die addressed a subject that remains […]