• Cancer
• Palliative Care
• Education and training

We read the article by Bandieri et al1 with great interest, and found our own experience as an in-hospital palliative care unit very much in agreement with their findings: ‘In clear antithesis to the common perception of end-of-life palliative care being synonymous with death and the absence of hope, EPC interventions have instead been described as an intervention that effectively counteracts pain and suffering, supports hope and dignity of life, and promotes the elaboration of the meaning of one’s illness and the acceptance of death’.

We also interviewed oncological patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals in 2023 who have worked with us or who were assisted by us over the past 10 years of our service (five patients, two caregivers, eight physicians and three nurses). The interview was structured by a psycho-oncology researcher, a photojournalist and a documentary actress to collect material—including artistic material—to create subsequent events open to the general public. The interview ended with a word chosen by the participants to represent early palliative care.

From the point of view of the patients, the thematic analysis showed that being assisted by a palliative care unit early in the disease trajectory was characterised by pleasant experiences and words describing presence, good management of symptoms and life. As regards hospital colleagues, the palliative care unit has helped them rediscover the depths of their roles as doctors and nurses. The stigma of associating palliative care with death was completely absent.

As suggested by the authors of the BMJ article, we used these ‘insights to be presented to patients, caregivers and citizens in public discourse’. Based on our material, an event open to the public was organised on the occasion of National Palliative Care Day (11 November 2023), whose title ‘Light is not a palliative’ echoed one of the words used by the interviewees.

70 people attended the event that traced the evolution of the palliative care concept in the world,2 through a discussion with the audience in the auditorium. We gave a detailed description of our activity and the evolution of our profiles within the hospital as well as the different lines of research and training .3–5

We explained the work done with the photographer, and the speaker presentations were accompanied by the artistic material collected during the interviews.

During the morning, we posed some questions to the attendees. Palliative care was described as a ‘global pathway’, not only of clinical support, but also psychosocial and spiritual support, integrated with other treatments.

At the end of the morning, we collected several suggestions for improving the service, which to date have been used for in-house training in the hospital palliative care service and to produce a new service brochure.

Attendees advised us to ‘be resilient in our collaborative work’, specifically by (1) continuing to train residents, hospital colleagues and colleagues in the area, (2) organising other dissemination events such as the one held in November and (3) collaborating with volunteer associations.

Table 1 shows the themes that emerged regarding the perception of palliative care by those who have experienced our service and by citizens at large.