Session 8. End of life and palliative care in the post-pandemic era: old problems and new perspectives

During the most critical phases of the Covid-19 pandemic, the management of end of life was a difficult undertaking, especially in the emergency wards and intensive care units. Many doctors and health professionals have often found themselves unprepared for choosing how to guarantee everyone the right to be cured or to the good death (Nicoli & Gasparetto, 2020). The problem of how to prolong life or accompany to death is not new and is one of the modern medical sciences’ most emblematic goals, which Ivan Illich (1976) called medicalisation of dying, highlighting its particular impact upon the dying process in modern culture. In this context, palliative care (originally called as “terminal care”) became a sort of synonymous of end of life management. It can be considered as a postmodern specialty, because it lacks a specific disease, bodily organ, or life stage to call its own (Stark, 2002). Therefore, it continues to be subject to prejudice, which relegates the role of palliative care to the treatment of pain in dying patients (Masel & Kreye, 2018).

Despite the fact that sociological analysis has provided several contributions over the years (e.g. Glaser and Strauss, 1966; Sudnow, 1967; Kaufman, 2005; Timmermans, 2005; Broom, 2015), end of life and palliative care represent a still relatively little explored topic by health sociology. 

This session calls on theoretical and empirical papers with an interest on different aspects of end of life and palliative care. All types of papers engaging with this topic are welcome, especially abstracts consistent with one of the three issues described below:

- how end of life and palliative culture are perceived in the medical and health fields, and how and why this perception was changed after Covid-19;

- what are palliative care models and health policies in different health systems, how they changed after the pandemic and what the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of them at promoting and spreading palliative care culture;

- what are the medical-health training in the palliative field and the main educational gaps that can be strengthened by the contribution of sociology.

Guido Giarelli is full professor of General Sociology at the University ‘Magna Græcia’ of Catanzaro (Italy). He is currently coordinator of the board of the Research Network 16 – Sociology of Health and Medicine of the European Sociological Association (ESA) and of the Section of Sociology of Health and Medicine of the Italian Sociological Association (AIS). His main research interests are in comparative health systems, non-conventional medicines and integrated medicine, illness narratives, aging and life styles.

Barbara Sena is associate professor of General Sociology at the Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests and publications include qualitative research methods, health issues related to patient-centred care and nursing professions. Her recent publications are on case study approach, interprofessional care and vaccination hesitancy.