Mike Stone Retired Non Clinical Private Individual Michael H Stone I was recently reflecting on how the UK Mental Capacity Act (MCA) has changed the way we approach decision making. I say ‘we’, as a bereaved family member, and you can read more about the events that changed my life– events that included 999 staff and my dead […]
Category: Feature
BODIES – A Medical Humanities Conference
Author: Dr Ishminder Mangat, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, England Bodies was the first ever medical humanities conference to take place in Bristol: it was held on Monday 26th June 2023 in the grand and imposing neo-Gothic Wills Memorial Building. For this summary article, I have tried to capture an account of […]
Medical Death Certification. Do we need medical training before medical examiners?
By Dr Pablo Millares Martin. GP Senior Partner. Whitehall Surgery, Wortley Ring Rd. Leeds, UK. E-mail: Pablo.martin@nhs.net Introduction The Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) is a very important legal document with dual functionality: to provide the information required for the registration of a death, but also to facilitate statistical comparisons of mortality causes, […]
The Palliative Times Special Festive Edition.
By Dr Joseph Hawkins, Consultant in Palliative Medicine, Clinical lead for End of Life Care, Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Foundation Trust. Twitter: @JoeHawk75825077 93 year old celebrates third resurrection. Doris (93), recently celebrated with all 24 of her next of kin after a week of not eating and drinking. ‘They keep saying I’m going […]
They told me not to go: Flat Holm Island, Wales
by Mark Taubert, Palliative Care Consultant, Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom Twitter: @ProfMarkTaubert A trip to a remote island with a derelict cholera hospital, to record a National Heritage Lottery funded audio podcast about pandemics, palliative care and isolation, inadvertently turns into an adventure. Flat Holm, or ‘Ynys Echni’, its Welsh name, is […]
A conversation about dying – Green Man Festival 2021
News and Events “What happens when you die” event at Green Man Festival 2021. Listen to the event here. The Green Man Festival is Wales’ largest art festival, and it returned with furore and a large offering of musical and spoken word performances, after being cancelled in 2020. Where better to discuss the […]
“One can die, but cannot fall ill”– A Survey on how costs may affect choice of therapy in Singapore
An article by Song Chiek Quah of the National Cancer Centre in Singapore Introduction Continued advances in medical care in the recent years have given some hope to patients afflicted with diseases that, in the past, have poor prognoses. However it would seem that hope comes at a price, at least within the Singaporean context. This […]
Studies of interest in Supportive and Palliative care on the CancerHelp UK clinical trials database
Introduction Do your cancer patients ever ask you about clinical trials? If so, you could show them the CancerHelp UK clinical trials database (http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/trials/trials-search/) which is part of the comprehensive patient information website of Cancer Research UK. This unique service was started over 10 years ago and provides information about UK cancer trials and studies, […]
‘Holding the baby’ at the end of life
J Gibbins,1 C Reid,2 R McCoubrie2 1SpR Palliative Medicine, Department of Palliative Medicine, Bristol Haematology & Oncology Centre, Horfield, Bristol, UK 2Department of Palliative Medicine, Bristol Haematology & Oncology Centre, Horfield, Bristol, UK Correspondence to Dr Jane Gibbins; janegibbins@hotmail.com Abstract Although there are obvious differences in caring for people at the extremes of life (newborns […]