The Sin of Sympatigo

Dr Matthew Doré, Palliative Care Consultant Northern Ireland Hospice and Belfast Trust SYMPATIGO DEFINITION: v. To listen intently and sympathize with your colleagues when they request assistance, and then to simply, and completely, forget about it. n. The ability to sympathize with, yet ignore, requests for help.1 In my ignorance I looked up a word ‘sympatiCO’ and […]

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China’s living will legislation: next steps to improving patient dignity

By Daoxin Yin1, 2,Mai Wang1, 2,Luxia Zhang1, 2, 3 Affiliations 1. National Institute of Health Data Science at Peking University, Beijing, China; 2. Advanced Institute of Information Technology, Peking University, Hangzhou, China 3. Renal Division, Department of Medicine, Peking University First Hospital, Peking University Institute of Nephrology, Beijing, China; Corresponding author Luxia Zhang, MD, MPH […]

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At risk feeding?

By Dr Matthew Doré (Chair of Palliative Care Congress) and Dr Alan McPherson (Chair of The Regional Palliative Medicine Group) “I don’t want thickener!”, “I want to eat it, not down my RIG” or most commonly “I want my roast dinner and all the trimmings, not smooshed!” Sound familiar? There has been an ongoing debate […]

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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 […]

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