Headed by David Clark, Professor of Medical Sociology in the Division of Surgical and Anaesthetic Sciences, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, the project places the issues involved in contemporary palliative care in a historical context, dealing with concepts of illness and suffering within 20th century healthcare, and changing notions of the 'good death'. The project places emphasis on the academic study of the history of hospices and palliative care. It has created an 'oral history' sound archive of interviews with key founders of the movement, and contributed a great deal to the preservation of hospice documents and records. In this way, the project is addressing concerns that the voices of those involved may go unrecorded, and that valuable source materials relating to hospice history may be lost. The current use of 'palliative care' grew out of the earlier 'terminal care' and 'hospice care'.
Palliative care affirms life and regards dying as a natural process.
It aims to provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms, ultimately seeking to integrate the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care, whilst offering support to the family and companions of a patient. Much of the project work has focused on Dame Cicely Saunders, who is widely credited as being the founder of the modern hospice movement in Britain. She first put forward her ideas and concerns about the neglect of the dying in 1958, and campaigned for better medical care for such patients, introducing sometimes controversial measures in pain relief. Her innovative approach to the use of analgesics emphasised the anticipation of, rather than the response to, pain. The project's researchers have documented and collected the complete papers of Cicely Saunders and they are temporarily archived in Sheffield.