Public Talk: Palliative care

Palliative Care has its origins in the modern hospice movement and pioneers such as Dame Cicely Saunders (St Christopher’s Hospice) and Dr Derek Doyle (St Columba’s Hospice). Today the challenge is to deliver care to patients at all stages of a life-limiting illness. Our research programme in pain management in Edinburgh has been the result of a very successful UK-wide collaboration and the results can be transferred and built on in many countries, including, in particular, those under-resourced.

Meeting Local and Global Challenges

How a country brings people into the world and cares for them as they leave this world captures the heart of healthcare. Establishing care for those living with life limiting illnesses and those whose death is close is an essential humanitarian act, yet in so many countries end of life care is left wanting. People die in the most horrendous pain, people die lonely and isolated, people die longing for a gentle touch and a caring word to calm their fears. Edinburgh University has a major global programme funded by DFID through THET focussed on improving end of life care for people in Africa through training local staff teams, setting in place clinical pathways for care and learning from African communities how to care in the community here in Scotland.