Challenges and Choices for Patient, Carer and Professional at the End of Life: Living with Uncertainty

Living with Uncertainty gives a broad perspective on the complexities and challenges of the practice of end-of-life care, as well as the perceived benefits and limitations of medical intervention.

Drawn from research and clinical and pastoral experience, the book examines the feelings associated with the end of life, highlighting the demands that people are faced with and their consequences. It moves into the difficult area of people who feel defeated by their illness and can or want to live no longer, as well as the family, caregivers and professionals who surround them. These perspectives have been built upon around a hundred narratives of lived experience, combined with the wider clinical and practical range of voices. A topical post-script Lessons from Covid-19 captures the choices and challenges on a personal, professional and systemic level which the pandemic acutely revealed with a multiplicity of examples.

This will be essential reading for students and professionals in palliative and end-of-life care. Families and friends will also benefit from this book as they try to come to terms with the delicate but universal issues of death and dying.

Catherine Proot holds an MSc in psychology and education from Ghent University, Belgium, a Postgraduate Diploma in counselling and a PhD from the UEA in Norwich, UK. A psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, she has specialised in palliative and bereavement care since 2005 in the UK and Belgium. She works in private practice in Brussels.

The Very Revd Michael Yorke (1939-2019) was a Cambridge graduate in law and theology. An Anglican Priest, he worked principally in and through four cathedrals. He was for 18 years a Samaritan, three of them as National Chairman, and was Vice Chairman to the Norfolk Hospice near Kings Lynn, UK