The field of palliative care promises support for a dying person's physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs, as well as the needs of family and community. Has this powerful vision been achieved? This state-of-the-field book argues that palliative care has drifted away from its transformative goals-and shows what to do about it.
Bringing together leading international scholars and practitioners, Well-Being at the End of Life demonstrates how contemporary palliative care has slowly but surely strayed from its original values and practices. The provision of palliative care now reflects institutional, medicalized, and health-service priorities. Increasingly, it has become solely clinical, confined and constrained by clinical service considerations and limitations. Those at the end of life are all too often viewed as patients to be treated instead of people with whom care providers must create collaboration, participation, and partnerships.
Contributors call for a paradigm shift in the values and priorities of palliative care to emphasize the importance of community to personal well-being. Drawing on the concept of health promotion, they advance a shared vision that merges the principles of public health with those of palliative care. Reimagining the field to foreground compassion and interdependence, Well-Being at the End of Life offers a new approach that puts community and professional partnerships at the heart of its practice.
Foreword, by Stephen R. Connor, Executive Director, Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance Preface, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear 1. Reimagination and Reform: The Case for Change in Palliative Care, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear 2. Healthcare Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Nicole Pitcher, Steven W. Cole, and Dacher Keltner 3. Palliative Care Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, and Mary Lou Kelley 4. Palliative Care: The New Essentials, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, and Aliki Karapliagou 5. Palliative Curriculum Reimagined, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear 6. Future Care Planning Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, Mark Taubert, and Helen Kingston 7. Palliative Care Access Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, Jason Mills, Manjula Patel, and Vishanthie Sewpaul 8. Bereavement Care Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, and Samar Aoun 9. Palliative Care Research Reimagined, by Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, Matilda Garrido, Emma Hodges, Joseph Sawyer, and Chris Peterson 10. Dying and Death Reimagined, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear 11. Public Health Reimagined, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear 12. Redefining Palliative Care for the Future, by Julian Abel and Allan Kellehear Appendix:The Compassionate City Charter Contributors Index
Julian Abel is a palliative care physician and visiting professor at Northumbria University. Allan Kellehear is professor of end-of-life care at Northumbria University. Abel and Kellehear are cofounders of Compassionate Communities UK and coeditors of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care (2022).
Reviews for Well-Being at the End of Life: Reimagining Palliative Care
Well-written, accessible, and inspiring, this book will be of immense value to palliative care professionals and to others who work with aged populations. -- Ellen L. Idler, editor of <i>Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health</i> This groundbreaking book offers a rigorously academic yet profoundly human framework centering social and spiritual dimensions of end-of-life experience. Moving beyond medicalized models, it reclaims something essential about being human; how we live, whom we love, and where we belong are as medically significant as any drug we might prescribe. -- BJ Miller, coauthor of <i>A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death</i> For decades, societies have responded to aging populations by medicalizing the end of life. This book provides an important alternative: a public health approach to the end of life. -- Luc Deliens, president of Public Health Palliative Care International
