Palliative Care as Transformative Practice

“Palliative care transforms everyone who participates in it — everyone who gives and receives it — from the inside out. It also has the power to transform systems from the inside out. Palliative care providers need public recognition and funding to trigger these transformations for the benefit of patients, families, and health systems around the world,” says Dr. Katherine Pettus, Political Theorist, Advocate for Improved Access to Internationally Controlled Medicines, Rights of Older Persons. In a piece in the Huffington Post, Dr. Pettus makes an apt case for palliative care to become more mainstream as it benefits patients and families, as well as clinicians.

“The qualities and virtues palliative care builds in practitioners at the bedside (the microcosm) have the power to shift world views in the macrocosm. It is not overstating the case to say that the development of palliative care represents the beginning of a paradigm shift. Unlike their patients, palliative care practitioners and advocates have voice and influence in the public world, and are using it to call for the discipline’s integration into national and global health systems as a matter of justice,” says Dr. Pettus. Click here to read more.