Palliative care is moving through an important period of expansion and development, spreading beyond its original hospice base to encompass care in the community, in hospitals, health centres, clinics and nursing homes. It can now be found in over 70 countries of the world. What challenges does this multidisciplinary speciality face as it seeks to combine high grade pain and symptom control with sensitive psychological, spiritual and social care? What are the implications of current constraints on health policy and planning? How do ethical issues about resource allocation and end of life care impinge? Can palliative care be further extended to include conditions other than cancer?

New Themes in Palliative Care addresses these and many related issues in ways which will be readily accessible to students of health and social care as well as to those involved in purchasing or providing palliative care services, and to social scientists interested in chronic illness, death and dying. Its editors are respected experts in the field with backgrounds in the social sciences, nursing and medicine and the book's contributors include leading international figures from a wide range of palliative care and academic disciplines.