Journal
of Palliative Care, Dec 2014, vol. 30, no. 4, p. 287-290
Cellarius,
Victor
In 1994, in
an article that distilled a collection of discussions that had been simmering
over the previous decade, David Clark asked whether hospice-palliative care was
entering a second wave. At the time, hospice-palliative care was becoming
bigger, more medical and technical, more research- and evidence-based, and more
bureaucratic. The discussions were deeply evaluative ones, often pitting the
original hospice-palliative care focus on the meaning of dying, life, and
death, against the more recent focus on symptom relief and patient-guided
quality of life. The question underlying those discussions has reappeared, for
it seems that palliative
care is entering a new wave once again.
Full text available
in Journal of Palliative
Care