Abstract
Palliative care has been developing strongly in recent decades and now has a global reach, albeit with patchy coverage. As it has grown into a recognizable field of activity, discernible fissures have opened up in its approach and orientation. Palliative care grew out of a hospice-type response to the needs of dying cancer patients. Its model of care fitted a particular trajectory of treatment and the associated illness experience. Within that model it identified an ethical and moral space in which to promote the holistic care of the patient and family, and it adopted particular strategies for pain and symptom management. Now in many countries, it seeks to meet the complex needs of aging populations characterized by multiple morbidities – in situations where demand for end-of-life care is growing. This requires it to adopt an ethics of public health and to champion the claim that access to palliative care is a human right. In addition to these clinical and service-level challenges, palliative care has to find an appropriate orientation to contexts where assisted dying is legalized. This may require it to modify its historic opposition to assisted death.
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Further Readings
Bosshard, G., Broeckaert, B., Clark, D., Materstvedt, L. J., Gordijn, B., & Müller-Busch, H. C. (2008). A role for doctors in assisted dying? An analysis of legal regulations and medical professional positions in six European countries. Journal of Medical Ethics, 34, 28–32.
Clark, D. (2010). International progress in creating palliative medicine as a specialized discipline. In G. Hanks et al. (Eds.), Oxford textbook of palliative medicine (4th ed., pp. 9–16). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lynch, T., Connor, S., & Clark, D. (2013). Mapping levels of palliative care development: A global update. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 45(6), 1094–1106. doi:10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2012.05.011.
ten Have, H., & Clark, D. (Eds.). (2002). The ethics of palliative care: European perspectives. Buckingham: Open University Press.
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Supported by Wellcome Trust Investigator Award 103319.
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Clark, D. (2015). Palliative Care. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_323-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_323-1
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