Palliative Care Research – new funding available

Today an exciting announcement was made about three organisations working together to increase our knowledge on the best way to provide palliative and end of life care. The MND Association and the Chief Scientists Office in Scotland (CSO) will be working with Marie Curie on a new research call.

In addition to a £1million funding pot from Marie Curie, the CSO will contribute £225,000 of funding and MND Association will contribute up to £200,000. Scientists, clinicians or healthcare workers are invited to submit their outline applications by 14 January 2016.

Acting on what you told us

The areas that we’d like to fund are based on a project that was completed in January 2015, known as the ‘Palliative and End of Life Care Priority Setting Partnership’, shortened to ‘PeolcPSP’. At the core of this 18 month project were responses to an online survey, where many people shared their questions or experiences about the end of life. We were pleased that many people affected by MND took part.

From those survey responses, we worked out that there were a massive 83 topics that would be suitable for a research study (and where no conclusive studies had already been conducted). All of these are important topics to investigate, so we’re hoping that researchers with an interest in working in any of these topics will think about submitting an application for funding.

So what kind of topics are included?

The topics for the call are the list of 83 questions from this earlier palliative care research study (the PeolcPSP study mentioned above). It is too long a list to include in this post, but the overarching themes include how (best to):

• communicate topics on palliative and end of life care
• manage symptoms and medications
• provide support for carers and families
• provide support in bereavement
• provide support for staff (and staff training)
• co-ordinate care services
• provide access to services
• decide where the care should be and what type of care

Where can I find out more?

A press release and more information on how to apply for this funding is available on the Marie Curie website.

The Palliative and end of life care Priority Setting Partnership final report is available online. There’s also a video about the project explaining how it happened and why it is important.