Palliative care--past and future--questioning great expectations

This paper argues that the future of palliative care cannot be divined reliably without considering how a set of basic questions might be answered by health-care professionals, administrators of health care systems, and citizens in countries throughout the world. Seven of the many questions centering on the mission of palliative care are explored here as pathways into the future of how we care for gravely ill and dying people. That future cannot be predicted from the vantage point of some super observatory. It will rather emerge from the responses we give now to a range of questions such as the seven considered in this paper. These questions identify fundamental dimensions of the mission of palliative care, and our responses will determine when, and where that mission will become reality.