The problem

Almost three in four people who die in Ireland have conditions where they could benefit from palliative care. And as people tend to live longer and more diseases become manageable for longer, the need for palliative care is expected to double over the next three decades. We need to understand how to meet these needs to improve people’s quality of life during illness. 

The project

The Health Research Board (HRB) and The Health and Social Care Research and Development Division in Northern Ireland provide funding to the All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC) to support the Palliative Care Research Network (PCRN). The network has 49 members from across the island of Ireland in disciplines including medicine, nursing, psychology, allied health professions, health economics, pharmacy and law.

The outcomes
  • AIIHPC has created two posts (the PCRN Project Manager and the Knowledge Transfer Project Manager) to provide additional support for researchers in the network and help them raise funding for research projects and widely communicate the findings of their studies
  • AIIHPC has supported the next generation of research leaders through the Early Career Researcher Forum, which has 205 members
  • Between 2017 and 2020 the PCRN secured an additional €5.3 million to support research projects
  • PCRN members published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers between 2017 and 2020
  • Between 2017 and 2020, there were 50 research engagements with AIIHPC’s Voices4Care Public, Patient and Carer involvement in research (PPI) panel of people with life-limiting conditions, carers, former carers and interested citizens.

Karen Charnley, Director of AIIHPC, says:

“The funding that AIIHPC receives from the HRB is crucial to us being able to support the Palliative Care Research Network, and it is highly valued. Through that funding we have been able to support different types of research on how palliative care can best be delivered, from models that analyse how services can operate through to testing interventions to support patients. This research is extremely important as the need for palliative care services is increasing fast and we must know how to grow services and support people’s quality of life in their time of need.”

‘AIIHPC — research to meet the growing need for palliative care’ is part of a wider collection of success stories across four themes from this year’s annual Health Research in Action. Download the full publication.