Palliative and supportive care aims to allow patients with a chronic, life threatening disease to achieve the best possible quality of life until they die. It has grown out of the modern hospice movement, established in 1967 at St Christopher's Hospice in South-East London, and is now an important aspect of health service provision in the UK. Patients requiring palliative and supportive care often have complex needs which require a well coordinated multidisciplinary approach to enable excellent clinical care to be achieved. This is frequently delivered across organisational as well as professional boundaries.

Palliative care research at Warwick Medical School is a developing area which is being built on a partnership between the University of Warwick, local PCTs, acute hospital trusts and the independent hospices in Coventry and Warwickshire. The focus of research is on evaluation of service delivery which draws on Warwick's strong tradition in primary care research and the social sciences. Recent evaluation projects have included the national Living with Cancer and Palliative Care Initiatives - funded by the Big Lottery Fund and the national Macmillan Cancer Support Gold Standards Framework for Community Palliative Care. Researchers at Warwick are also leading on local projects concerned with service development in Palliative Day Care, community palliative care provision and the interface between primary and specialist palliative care using evaluative, qualitative and action research methodologies.

Researchers in palliative care at Warwick are members of several national research collaboratives including:

• Macmillan Cancer Support
• COMPASS
• NCRI

The Palliative Care & Cancer Research Group

A quarterly meeting of researchers and clinicians interested in palliative and supportive care meet to discuss results of research and explore new project proposals. If you would like to be part of this group please contact Morna Woods. For more information about research at Warwick Medical School please contact Dr Daniel Munday.

Current & recent research

• Offering Quality of Life (QOL) Interventions to Male Cancer Patients - How do oncologists decide?
• Evaluation of the New Opportunities Fund ' Palliative Care Initiative'
• New Opportunities Fund 'Living with Cancer'
• The Gold Standards Framework
• Information Needs in Prostate Cancer Tool (INPCT): perceived value, utility and future direction
• Prostate Cancer in African Caribbean Men: Experiences, Perceptions & Information Needs

Key people

• Dr Dan Munday Associate Clinical Professor in Palliative Medicine
• Prof Jeremy Dale Professor of Primary Care
• Dr Veronica Nanton Senior Research Fellow
• Dr Paul Ong Associate Research Fellow
• Janice Koistinen Macmillan Projects Support Manager

Enquiries contact

• Morna Woods
  PA to Palliative Care Group
  024 765 75859
  M.M.Woods@warwick.ac.uk

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