Rethinking palliative care: A social role valorisation approach
Paul Sinclair
Abstract
This book's message is that palliative care does not deliver on its aims to value people who are dying and make death and dying a natural part of life. The book draws from wide social-science perspectives and critically and specifically applies these to palliative care and its dominant medical model. The author argues for the de-institutionalisation of palliative care and the development of an alternative framework to the approaches found in hospices, palliative care units, and community-based palliative care services. He offers a new conceptualisation of death and loss that refines and expand ... More
This book's message is that palliative care does not deliver on its aims to value people who are dying and make death and dying a natural part of life. The book draws from wide social-science perspectives and critically and specifically applies these to palliative care and its dominant medical model. The author argues for the de-institutionalisation of palliative care and the development of an alternative framework to the approaches found in hospices, palliative care units, and community-based palliative care services. He offers a new conceptualisation of death and loss that refines and expands modern understandings in a way which also resonates with traditional religious views concerning death. Wide-ranging recommendations advise fundamental change in the concept of palliative care, the way support and services are organised, and the day-to-day practice of palliative care.
Keywords:
social science,
medical model,
de-institutionalisation,
alternative framework,
hospices,
religious views,
support services
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781861349217 |
| Published to Policy Press Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781861349217.001.0001 |
