Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

Palliative care research examines how medical teams can relieve suffering and support decision-making for people living with serious illness, with particular attention to the period approaching death. Investigators study how and when prognostic information gets communicated to patients and families, how advance care planning shapes treatment choices in settings like the ICU, and whether earlier integration of palliative services improves the quality of dying without simply accelerating it. A central tension in the literature concerns how health systems can scale these practices equitably while containing costs that often spike in the final months of life. Active work is probing how family perspectives diverge from clinical assessments of a good death, and what communication strategies best bridge that gap across cultural and socioeconomic contexts.

Works

158,490

Total citations

1,437,212

Keywords

Palliative CareEnd-of-LifeAdvance Care PlanningFamily PerspectivesQuality of DyingCommunication Strategies