The evolution of palliative care.

An encounter with one patient in 1948 was the catalyst for the Hospice Movement. The challenge to undertake appropriate pain and symptom control together with experience in further listening to patients in the small number of homes especially planned for dying people, finally came together during the 1960s as the impetus for the first modern hospice which opened in 1967. Since then, palliative care has been developing worldwide and has shown that the basic principles demonstrated in those early years can be interpreted in various cultures and with different levels of resources. Symptom control by a multi-professional team backed by research and education of both professionals and public has spread both into home care and into general hospitals. The family is seen as the unit of care as it finds its own potential, searches for meaning and makes the achievements possible at the end of life.