{"id":2431,"date":"2026-09-03T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/spcare\/?p=2431"},"modified":"2026-09-05T20:41:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T20:41:48","slug":"how-does-a-palliative-care-clinician-keep-up-with-the-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/spcare\/2026\/09\/03\/how-does-a-palliative-care-clinician-keep-up-with-the-evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"How does a palliative care clinician keep up with the evidence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Dr Angus Grant<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Specialty Doctor, Palliative Medicine, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board <\/em><\/p>\n

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Palliative Care asks us to sit with uncertainty with patients every day. What I didn\u2019t expect was how much of my own professional uncertainty would come from a different source: the ever-increasing volume of literature that I planned to read but hadn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my day-to-day job as a Specialty Doctor, it\u2019s often easy to sideline this work for other, more pressing clinical duties. This isn\u2019t a unique experience, with all of us clinicians juggling increasingly busy caseloads. As a result, keeping up to date with best practice often falls to the bottom of our priority list, potentially to the detriment of the care we deliver to our patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a piece about that problem, and about the habits we can build in our daily practice to help solve it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The barriers I kept running into<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite my best intentions, keeping up with the literature was a challenge. When a moment arose to undertake reading, I ran into barriers. These included:<\/span><\/p>\n