The life so short, the craft so hard to learn: a model for post-basic education in palliative care

This paper seeks to review the available educational palliative care experiences at post-basic level and explores different possibilities for current and future programmes. Central to this review is the exploration of the values and beliefs that underpin educational practice, and the relationship of these to palliative care practice. There are gaps in espoused theory, and theory in the practice of both is of critical importance. We locate our own values and beliefs in the new paradigm of human inquiry and propose that this paradigm and its methodologies have a considerable contribution to make to the development of both palliative care education and practice.