The roots of palliative care: Michael Kearney, Sue Britton, and Justin Sanders

The roots of palliative care: Michael Kearney, Sue Britton, and Justin Sanders
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast for Every Healthcare Professional; by Alex Smith; 3/13/25
... As far as we’ve come in the 50 years since Balfour Mount and Sue Britton opened the first palliative care at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Quebec, have we lost something along the way? In today’s podcast we welcome some of the early pioneers in palliative care to talk about the roots of palliative care.  Sue Britton was the first nurse hired on that palliative care unit. Michael Kearney on a transformational meeting in Cicely Saunders’s office, with Balfour Mount at her side and a glass of sherry.  Justin Sanders wants to be sure the newer generations of palliative care clinicians understand the early principles and problems that animated the founders of hospice and palliative care, including:

• Origins of the word “palliative” – it’s not what I thought! Yes, it means “to cloak,” but there’s more…
• Whole-person-care
• Total pain
• Healing as a process distinct from the deterioration of the body
• Sympomatologists
• The patient and family as the unit of care