Primary Palliative Care Research Group

Health Promoting Palliative Care

An approach developed in Australia and being adopted around the world that recognises the importance of community involvement and social attitudes to dying and death in the search for a 'good death for all'.

An exciting international development known as "Health Promoting Palliative Care" is calling for community involvement in end-of-life care and encourages people and the community to generally talk and be more involved in many aspects of care at the end-of-life. This approach argues that if death and dying were brought more into the open it would be much easier to plan for a good death.

'Good life, good death, good grief' recognises the relevance of 'Health Promoting Palliative Care' in Scotland, where healthcare services will struggle to provide good end-of-life care to an aging population with an increasing preference to be cared for at home without community support.

Education for patients, carers and the wider community that encourage bringing death and dying into thought and conversation may contribute to the ideal of a 'good death'; where our dying experiences and the experiences of our grieving family and friends are more likely to arrive as expected inevitabilities of life for which we are as well prepared as possible.

 

Exploring 'Health Promoting Palliative Care' is recognised by the PPCRG as a central premise, cross-cutting our five key focusses working towards caring for all towards the end of life.

Hospices, schools and health promoting palliative care

Advancing education and support around death, dying and bereavement: hospices, schools and health promoting palliative care.

Innovative collaborative work with St. Columba’s Hospice

Strathcarron Hospice is collaborating in an innovative project working with Amy Hardie to make a film that will be shown in cinema and BBC television in 2015.

Health promoting palliative care at St Joseph’s Hospice, London

Community engagement initiatives have great potential to help people live to the full at the end of life.

'Health Promoting Palliative Care on the website of 'Good life, good death, good grief'

Chapter written by Allan Kellehear entitled 'Health Promotion and Palliative Care'

Haraldsdottir E, Clark P & Murray SA. EJPC, 2010;17(3):130-132