Palliative Day Care in Practice

Day care for people with advanced diseases is one of the most rapidly expanding components of palliative care in the UK, and is increasingly a focus of new service development throughout the world. Many benefits, in terms of quality of life, holistic care for the patient and family andincreased time at home are claimed by day care. Palliative Day Care in Practice provides a comprehensive overview of the current philosophy, patterns and policies of palliative day care. It places emphasis on the need to evaluate performance in palliative day care and describes in detail aspects such as audit, hea;th economics, research andtheir associated problems and pitfalls. For readers new to the field it aims to survey the broad concepts and components of palliative day care and the philosophies and practical issues that relate to them. For those more experienced in the field, it seeks to highlight some of the questions, challenges and dilemmas that palliative daycare services face and which will need to be addressed in the years ahead. It will prove valuable to specialist palliative care practitioners, researchers and purchasers interested in establishing or evaluating palliative day care.

Kathryn Myers trained in Medicine at St. Anne's College Oxford and the Royal London Hospital Medical School, graduating in 1986. Worked in general medicine and haematology before training in palliative medicine in the North Thames region. One of the founders of the Thames regions palliative day care study. Previously worked as a consultant at the Mildmay Hospital, UK, providing palliative care for people with HIV and AIDS. She now works part-time. Julie Hearn joined King's College Medical School/St Christopher's Hospice to helpf set up the Department of Palliative Care and Policy. She continues to work on projects evaluating the effectiveness of palliative care services and on the epidemiology of cancer pain control. Julie completed a part-time Masters degree in Public Health at St GeorgeOs Hospital in 1997. She joined the UK Co-ordinating Committee on Cancer Research as Deputy Executive Secretary in 1998, and was appointed Acting Executive Secretary in August 2000.