Palliative Care in Europe, Concepts and Policies

The book is concerned with the organisation, ideas and problems of palliative care in the European context. As a result of a BIOMED project, various organisations, concepts and problematic issues of palliative care have been studied and described. The literature analysing and discussing these issues is rather scarce. So, this book will first provide an excellent overview of developments in palliative care in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The book aims at the following readership: healthcare professionals interested in the characteristics of palliative care palliative care practitioners interested in exploring and analysing the conceptual and philosophical issues of their discipline policy-makers, ethicists, social scientists interested in the concepts and philosophical dimensions of palliative care. The contributions to the book have been developed in the context of a three year research project 'Palliative Care Ethics' (PALLIUM). This project, funded by the Commission of the European Communities, aims at clarifying the interrelations of concepts and moral issues in palliative care in seven European countries. All authors have co-operated as researchers in the project over the last 3 years. They are experts in palliative care and/or ethics in their respective countries. All of the chapters have been exclusively prepared for this volume in the context of the project.