Palliative Care Research Conference

Professor Richard Huxley
Professor of Medical Ethics and Law | Director, Centre for Ethics in Medicine

Richard is a leading voice in end-of-life ethics, advising the GMC, Resuscitation Council, and governments across the UK, Ireland, and Jersey. Winner of Bristol University’s Engagement Award for public work on end-of-life issues, he has chaired national and international ethics bodies and continues to shape debate and policy in medical ethics and law.

Dr Sarah Yardley
Associate Professor in Palliative Medicine, Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, University College London

Honorary Consultant in Palliative Medicine, University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Title: Rewilding Healthcare: redeeming relationship to create care that is not just safe but good

Sarah’s research focuses on reducing the gaps between rhetoric and reality, policy and practice, expectations and experience in healthcare. She is particularly interested in the need to redeem the role of relationship-centred practices in healthcare systems. Her recent Churchill Fellowship took her to the USA, Canada and Australia to learn about systematically improving healthcare for people living with complex mental health who subsequently need palliative care for advanced incurable physical illnesses.

Blurb: In health systems shaped by rigid structures, people living with complex mental health conditions and advanced illness often fall through the gaps because our models of care were never designed with them in mind. This talk draws on global learning from Canada, the USA, Australia, and the UK to explore how rewilding healthcare can help us redeem relationship as a mechanism for redesigning care so that it is not just safe, but genuinely good.Through lived‑experience narratives, case studies, and practical frameworks, we will explore how relational thinking can rebalance our approaches to risk, dissolve unhelpful boundaries, and create ecosystems where structures serve relationship rather than constrain it. The session invites participants to rethink how decisions are made, how teams collaborate, and how systems can adapt — asking not when to work relationally, but how to embed relationality at every decision point. Ultimately this is a call to imagine—and build—care systems where trust, interdependence, and collective social safety become the foundations for meaningful, equitable palliative care.

Professor Kate Woodthorpe

Professor, Department of Social & Policy Sciences

Co-Director, Centre for Death and Society Centre for Qualitative Research

Professor Kate Woodthorpe is director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. She has conducted funded research and published widely on funeral costs and practice, families at the end of life, and the deathcare sector, as well as advising multiple government departments and agencies including the DWP, CMA and Scottish Government. She is currently involved in two ESRC projects, one as Principal/Lead Investigator on dying at home, and one as Co-Investigator on death administration. You can find her on Linkedin.

Accommodation recommendations: Timbrell’s yard, Travelodge Bath, Premier Inn Bath, Bailbrook House.

The closest railway station to the Hospice is in Bradford on Avon, with available bus routes which can bring you into Winsley.

We have free parking at the Hospice, with Electric Vehicle charging points in our top car park.