Palliative care is increasing, but curative care is growing even faster in the last months of life.

Abstract

The introduction of early palliative care might be hoped to moderate the medicalisation of dying and the increasingly frequent medical and surgical treatment that patients generally receive in the last months of life. Indeed the old concept of an abrupt change from curative to palliative care when a person is terminally ill and imminently dying is giving way gradually to the better concept of a phased introduction of palliative care from diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, as advocated in Figure 1.1 Figure 1. Contrasting the old concept of curative care being suddenly replaced by palliative care to a gradual introduction of palliative care from diagnosis of any life-threatening illness. By 2018, GPs in Scotland recognised 69% of their patients for a palliative care approach by the time …