Gratuitous holiday snap unrelated to post

I’ll be spending the weekend enjoying the sunshine reminiscing over holiday snaps catching up with tweets from #CancerCongress, #PPCConference, #COSA2014 working on an ethics proposal. If you’re looking for something to do, try this reading list.

• The Guardian gives us a look into the lives of PhD students.
• The Conversation takes a look at problems with peer review. “Many now believe that long-standing metrics of academic research – peer review, citation-counting, impact factor – are reaching breaking point. But we are not yet in a position to place complete trust in the alternatives – altmetrics, open science, and post-publication review.”
• 5 ways for scientists to attract media interest via Research Media
• From the UK’s Daily Mail: Dementia patients are being failed at the end of life because dementia is not being recognised as a terminal condition. Meanwhile, Dirk Houttekier talks to EAPC Blog about a recent paper in Palliative Medicine, with a similar theme.
• Margaret McCartney (@mgtmccartney) writes about the pressure put on patients to undergo palliative chemotherapy, and how we might offer them more “humane, happier endings” at the end of life.
• Hoping for a good death in the New York Times. Do your loved ones know your wishes?
• From the ASCO Post: at the recent Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium in the US (#palonc), “The overriding consensus…was that achieving optimal high-quality cancer care requires both state-of-the-art cancer therapy and the integration of palliative care principles throughout the course of a patient’s care…” Woot woot! That’s what I’m talking about. (As are you, probably.)
• ehospice interviews Prof Patsy Yates about the new ANZ Intensive Care Society Statement on Care and Decision Making at the End-of-Life for the Critically Ill
• Did you know that Next Year, One Billion Works Will Be Free To Use Online, via Creative Commons licences? That includes all the original content published here on Palliverse.

Enjoy your weekend. For more palliative care reading, check out the “progressive blog” from Pallimed, GeriPal and AAHPM today.

Elissa