Palliative care in the spotlight

HEALTH and social care practitioners from around the country gathered in Dundee for the National Palliative Care Conference.

The event — entiltled Modern Dying: New Hopes, New Choices, New Challenges’ — looked at the modern perspectives on death and dying and aimed to highlight new approaches to managing, supporting and communicating with patients living with life-threatening illness.

Dr Deans Buchanan, lead clinician in palliative medicine with Dundee Health and Social Care Partnership, who welcomed delegates and gave an overview of the conference, said: “It has been said that how we die has now become a contested space. This describes that, in the modern world, how and when we die is influenced by availability of new treatments and decisions to start or stop treatments.

“In addition there are so many different perspectives on what a ‘good death’ might be and how dying may be influenced by societal context, politic a l p o l i c y, c u l t u r a l changes, money, the law, ethics, digital lives and perhaps increasingly — our own striving to avoid death in the first place.

“Modern death is one of new hopes, choices and challenges. The conference explored aspects of this ‘contested space’ and what that meant for professionals caring for those who are dying but, more importantly, what it may be like for those people dying and for their families.”