Palliative Care: Transforming the Care of Serious Illness offers a comprehensive introduction to a field that is reshaping how serious illness is understood and treated. Bringing together foundational thinking and influential research, it illuminates how palliative care can improve quality of life while addressing complex medical, ethical, and social needs.
The volume opens with an in‑depth overview of the history and evolution of palliative care, highlighting its roots, core principles, and impact on contemporary health care. It then presents twenty-five seminal articles by leaders in the field, covering both classic contributions and more recent work on caregiving and the economics of care.
Readers gain insight into why high-quality care for people with advanced illness matters, how patients and families cope, and what policies and practices can expand access. Topics range from legal and ethical questions to pain and symptom management, cross‑cultural considerations, and underlying philosophical perspectives on suffering and dignity.
This collection is valuable for clinicians, health professionals, policy makers, students, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how palliative care can shape more compassionate and effective responses to serious illness.
- Historical and conceptual foundations of palliative care
- Landmark articles by pioneers and contemporary experts
- Legal, ethical, and cross‑cultural dimensions of care
- Pain management, caregiving, and cost of care insights
