[Palliative care, a medical discipline dealing with the end of life]

Insofar as they take into account, not only the physical needs of the dying, but also their psycho-affective ones, Palliative Care are, with time, becoming a full-fledged area of medical specialization, the one which deals with the last phase of life. In order to be really efficient, that medical activity requires to resort to numerous skills: those of doctors, nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists..., which implies setting up suitable structures. Historically, Palliative Care have developed within specialized units: the Palliative Care Units; such units should, now, only be seen as centres for research and teaching. But, as time goes one, Palliative Care should, in fact, be practised wherever patients are dying: i.e., in hospitals, provided the staff are adequately trained and even, if need be, with the help of Mobile Palliative Care Teams; at home where general practioners, helped by a real network of professionals, could then manage to give the patients who wish to do so, the opportunity to die at home. Such practise of Palliative Care makes attitudes of therapeutic obstinacy irrelevant. Moreover when Palliative Care are practised, patients practically never ask for euthanasia.