Crossing Over: Narratives of Palliative Care

Rating:
Summary: The Challenge of Palliative Care
Review: An ethicist, a physician, a nurse and an anthropologist, all working in the USA and Canada have combined their skills, their experience and, more importantly their sentitive insights into the kaleidoscope of emotions and reactions encountered when caring for those with life-threatening illnesses. The reader new to this field will probably assume that the cases are fictitious so incredibly complex is each one. The doctor, nurse or social worker who has spent any time in palliative care will recognise the challenges he or she meets every single day - challenges infinitely more difficult and demanding that purely ' pain and symptom control' If, as the authors suggest, this book is read alongside MacDonald's Palliative Medicine - a case-based manual ( also from Oxford Press incidentally )they will have some of the best teaching material in the field of palliative care. Criticisms ? Possibly a trifle too long and wordy and, so far as the details of medical care are concerned, a reflection of North American practise, at times different from the rest of the world but neverthless a book for everyone in palliative care to read and benefit from. A welcome addition to the fast-growing literature in this field of human need and response.