Skip to main content

Cultural considerations in palliative care

Guest Editors

Qiaohong Guo, PhD, Capital Medical University, China 
Catheryn S. Koss, JD, PhD, Sacramento State University, USA
Rebecca Jane Wright, PhD, BSc (Hons), RN, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, USA
 

BMC Palliative Care has published this Collection on Cultural considerations in palliative care. This Collection highlights the importance of cultural competence in providing patient-centered end-of-life care. It delves into cross-cultural perspectives on death, family dynamics, ethical considerations, barriers to access, and cultural adaptation of interventions. Additionally, it addresses the unique cultural aspects in pediatric palliative care, intersectionality, cultural rituals and bereavement practices, and healthcare policy implications. By examining these themes, the Collection enhances understanding and promote culturally sensitive approaches in palliative care delivery, ensuring equitable access and compassionate care for individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.

Meet the Guest Editors

Back to top

Qiaohong Guo, PhD, Capital Medical University, China 

Dr Qiaohong Guo is a full professor of Nursing at Capital Medical University. She received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at CancerCare Manitoba and the University of Manitoba in Canada. Her research focuses on psychosocial support in oncology palliative care, family-based intervention development and evaluation, and pediatric palliative care. Her work was funded by prestigious fundings such as the National Social Science Foundation of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. She serves on the editorial board and as a reviewer for several international journals.

Catheryn S. Koss, JD, PhD, Sacramento State University, USA

Catheryn Koss, JD, PhD, is a Gerontology Professor at Sacramento State University where she teaches courses on aging policy and research methods. Her research interests include advance care planning, diminished capacity, and elder abuse. Prior to earning her doctorate degree in Gerontology from the University of Kansas, Catheryn founded and served as Executive Director of the Senior Law Resource Center, a non-profit organization that provided elder law education and services to older adults and caregivers. She is a former Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging Fellow and an active member of the Gerontological Society of America.

Rebecca Jane Wright, PhD, BSc (Hons), RN, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, USA

Rebecca Wright is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON), working in health care since 2004. She was a nurse at St. Christopher’s Hospice, UK, earning her doctoral degree from the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. Her program of research partners nationally and internationally with interprofessional, transdisciplinary and community-based teams, working with different populations to adapt and apply the experience-based co-design (EBCD) methodology to improve experiences of access and delivery to palliative and end-of-life care, and development and application of qualitative, participatory methodologies within a range of settings and conditions.

About the Collection

Optimal care for patients facing life-threatening illnesses should be individualized, reflecting each patient’s preferences and values, shaped not only by one’s physical needs—pain and symptom management—but also emotional, social, spiritual, and cultural ones. Understanding how cultural considerations such as beliefs, values, and traditions shape patients’ experiences of illness and death in clinical settings are essential in providing patient-centered and culturally sensitive palliative care. For instance, culture contributes to varying attitudes, preferences, perceptions, and experiences in treatment and care preferences—some may want more aggressive treatment options while others may opt for pain management. Different attitudes towards life support measures (for example, resuscitation, intubation) and location of death vary greatly across cultures, and groups' greater attitudes toward death, dying, and healthcare are similarly crucial in decision making processes. Finally, the role family and/or care partners play and the want for advance care planning in end-of-life care differ across populations.

With these considerations in mind, BMC Palliative Care has published this Collection on Cultural considerations in palliative care, exploring the effectiveness and accessibility of palliative care services for all individuals. We were interested in but not limited to the following topics:

  • Cultural competence, humility, sensitivity, and/or safety in palliative care givers
  • Cross-cultural perspectives on death and dying
  • Family and/or care partner dynamics
  • Cultural influences on choosing place of death
  • Ethical considerations in cultural diversity
  • Barriers and facilitators to access and equity
  • Cultural adaptation of palliative care interventions
  • Cultural competence, humility, sensitivity, and/or safety in pediatric palliative care
  • Intersectionality and cultural identities of patients receiving palliative care
  • Cultural rituals and bereavement practices
  • Healthcare policy and cultural competence, humility, sensitivity, and/or safety
  • Efforts to decolonize palliative care

Image credit: © melita / Stock.adobe.com

  1. Effective clinician-patient communication is essential for delivering quality end-of-life care. However, there are no validated measures to assess the quality of end-of-life communication for Chinese patients.

    Authors: Jacqueline K. Yuen, Helen Y. L. Chan, Tracy W. T. Chen, Steven T. Chu, Annie O. L. Kwok, Doris Y. P. Leung, Harinder S. Gill, Kwok-wai Tsang, Doris M. W. Tse, Desmond Y. H. Yap, Terence Yip and Robert M. Arnold
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2025 24:140
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. It is unclear what People Living with Dementia (PLwD) consider a good death to entail, or how those perspectives vary according to culture and context. We aimed to compare the meaning of a good death for PLwD ...

    Authors: Rasa Mikelyte, Karen Harrison Dening, Déborah Oliveira, Julia Maria Vanelli, Adriele Ferreira Neves, Natashe Lemos Dekker, Francelise Pivetta Roque and Edison Iglesias de Oliveira Vidal
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2025 24:138
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. In an increasingly globalized world, multiculturalism has transformed healthcare settings, making cultural diversity an essential component of care. In end-of-life processes, this context presents unique chall...

    Authors: María José Cáceres-Titos, Juan Miguel Porras-Santana, María R. Cabillas-Romero and E. E. Begoña García-Navarro
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2025 24:124
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. Advance directives are essential to advance care planning, allowing individuals to document their end-of-life care preferences in a living, legally binding document. Cultural factors such as collectivism and f...

    Authors: Duan-Rung Chen, Yuchi Young, Ashley Shayya, Taylor Perre and Thomas O’Grady
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2025 24:104
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Medical professionals who are engaged in palliative care commonly experience negative emotions resulting from the pain and grief experienced by patients and family members, which results in enormous psychologi...

    Authors: Fang Tan, Yan Wu, Na Li, Chuan Zhang, Shan Chen, Lan Huang, Yang Chen, Jianjun Jiang and Qian Deng
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2025 24:2
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Measuring palliative care quality requires the application of evaluation methods to compare clinically meaningful groups of patients across different settings. Such protocols are currently lacking in Poland. T...

    Authors: Katarzyna Wilk-Lelito, Anna Białoń-Janusz, Magdalena Kowalczyk, Elżbieta Wesołek and Tomasz Grądalski
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:301
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. The Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) is a key tool for assessing the quality of palliative care using patient-reported outcomes. This study aimed to culturally adapt and translate the IPOS to Ko...

    Authors: So-Jung Park, Yujin Park, Mira Han, Sun-Hyun Kim, In Cheol Hwang, Go-un Woo, Yoo Jeong Lee, Young Sung Kim, Hyun Jung Jho and Yoon Jung Chang
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:298
    Content type: Research Published on:

  9. Effective medication management is crucial for ensuring timely pain and symptom control at the end of life. Dying in pain is a major concern for patients, yet some find less effective pain control at home. Fam...

    Authors: Fei Yang, Pusheng Wang, Yong Tang, Min Song, Jun Jing, GuiJun Lu and Bee Wee
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:248
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. This paper aimed to explore the palliative care (PC) needs and barriers to access among cancer patients in a rural region of North India with a high cancer burden.

    Authors: Mayank Gupta, Ankita Kankaria, Liya E. Joshy, Sandeep Singh, Bhajan Lal, Subhash Choudhary, Sapna Marcus, Anju Grewal, Lajya Devi Goyal and Rakesh Kakkar
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:240
    Content type: Research Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:258

  11. Women living with HIV (WLWH) in low- middle-income countries (LMICs) face increased mortality risks from comorbidities despite progress in antiretroviral therapy. Palliative care (PC) is vital for these patien...

    Authors: Ngozi Idemili-Aronu, Tonia Chinyelu Onyeka, Uchechukwu Joel Okenwa, John Oluwaseyi Jemisenia, Ikechukwu Alex Okoli, John Olajide Olawepo and Echezona Edozie Ezeanolue
    Citation: BMC Palliative Care 2024 23:227
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select Cultural considerations in palliative care from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.