Two world leaders in palliative care at Lancaster University

The researchers from the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University have both been listed in the top 0.1% of scholars worldwide writing about this topic.

Expertscape's PubMed-based algorithms rate scholars writing about palliative care over the past decade, with the top 0.1% rated as "world expert".

Brendan McAdams and John Sotos from Expertscape congratulated both Lancaster professors.

“Reaching this level of expertise is a tremendous achievement.”

Prof Sheila Payne is widely recognised throughout the world as an influential leader in promoting multidisciplinary work in palliative care. She is a former President of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) and also holds a visiting chair at Ulster University, Northern Ireland.

“My work is recognised and used to influence policy and practice to improve palliative care throughout the world," she said. "My research focuses on the needs of older people and family caregivers, who have cancer and other chronic diseases, and evaluation of organisational and service configurations.

“My specific research interests focus on the role and experiences of family carers in supporting patients approaching the end of life. For example, I have been involved in seven large European Commission funded studies, including two current ones on Palliative Sedation and MyPal: investigating the use of digital technologies for adults and children with blood cancers.”

Prof Nancy Preston is a co-director in the International Observatory on End of Life Care.

“Palliative care is still largely received by people with cancer," she said. "I am interested in how we integrate palliative care to other services to improve uptake of services and dissemination of the principles of palliative care in general care.

“We also need to get our research to as wider audience as possible. We have used MOOCs (a massive open online course which is free to join) to do this and have had over 10,000 participants worldwide as well as a free online book which can be downloaded here.

“Using research to educate our future leaders in palliative care is key, and I am particularly proud of our alumni from our PhD in Palliative Care who come from all over the world, and will be the research leaders of tomorrow.”