Palliative care in Italy

摘要

During the last few years important initiatives have been taken by the Ministers of Health, Bindi and Veronesi, to promote the development of palliative care with the 'Piano sanitario nazionale' 1998-2000 (Bindi 1999). However, the understanding of the meaning of the concept 'palliative care' has presented many problems in Italy because the Italian debate on palliative care has not focused on conceptual clarification. Consequently we can observe that in Italy on the one hand the theoretical meaning of palliative care is not sufficiently clear, and on the other hand the well-known definition of the WHO is generally accepted. But it is also possible to observe that perhaps such an unclear definition of palliative care is dependent on 'health diplomacy' rather than an explicit awareness of what palliative care really is. An example would be the expanding involvement of disciplines of medicine such as oncology and pain management, demonstrated for example in the publications of the journal Quaderni di cure palliative.