Aim and Vision
Palliative Care Research: 2020 vision
We aim to conduct research around 5 key challenges currently facing end-of-life care. These are:
- Reaching all people in need with any life-threatening illness, taking palliative care beyond cancer, from which only 25% of people now die
- Helping people at all times in their illness: not just in the very terminal stage but from diagnosis of a life-threatening illness
- Caring for all aspects of the person, all dimensions - physical, psychological, social and spiritual
- Having reliably good end-of-life care available for people in all settings: in the community, nursing homes and hospitals as well as in hospices
- Making end-of-life care available for people in all nations, especially the poorer countries
As a multi-disciplinary team drawn from hospital, hospice, primary care and social science settings our experience and expertise is in seeking patient and carer perspectives using qualitative longitudinal methods link and integrating these with professional views link in order to make recommendations for service development. We also are trialling and evaluating complex interventions to inform national developments in palliative care.
What is Palliative Care? WHO definition
Palliative care from a student perspective: website produced by second year medical students at the University of Edinburgh.
The International Primary Palliative Care Research Group. We co-founded this group in 2005. Its sixth annual meeting will take place in Lisbon in May 2011. Details about this group can be accessed at the group's website. This group seeks to stimulate and develop palliative care research by networking and sharing ideas and methodological expertise internationally.