13/02/2015

UIC Team Receives Grant from Spanish Association Against Cancer for Research into Palliative Care

A team from the UIC’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and represented by Drs. Albert Balaguer, Cristina Monforte and Josep Porta has received one of the five research grants awarded by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC). The team’s research efforts will focus on the area of palliative care. The suffering undergone by cancer patients, not only in terms of physical pain but also their anguish at the likelihood of death, can cause some of them to want to end their own lives.

In order to detect this desire for early death, study its causes and find ways to help those who are suffering from it, first it must be clearly and rigorously defined. The first stage of the team’s project will involve reaching an international consensus on a definition that will make it possible to diagnose the desire for early death. The second stage will involve designing a tool to allow for early detection, in order to help those who are suffering from this phenomenon.

The research team is made up of doctors, nurses and psychologists, all of whom have spent years studying cancer and related suffering. Within the remit of the grand-funded project, they have researched the meaning that the desire for early death holds for those patients who are experiencing it, along with the connections between this desire and related issues such as pain, the patient's psychological and emotional condition, their social environment and living arrangements.