• A very personal (and professional) reflection by Scott Murray on the importance of early palliative (or anticipatory) care was published in the June edition of the BMJ.
• The March edition of the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Healthcare have published an article by Trine Brogaard, Mette Neergaard and Scott Murray, which describes calls for primary palliative care throughout Scandinavia!
• In the March edition of EJPC Santiago Corrêa et al describes the initiative ‘We are by your side’ that he has been involved in to formalise primary palliative care in Brazil. 
• A review article by Afshar et al. from Germany elucidates the importance of optimising the identification of non-cancer patients in need of palliative care in general practice.
• Two recent publications from Canada have helped to put the spotlight on the value and enablers of home deaths. Results of a multi-province study involving 60,000 cancer patients in their last month of life, found that investment in home-based palliative care reduces overall costs to the health care system. The link to this article by Burge and Lawson et al published in Current Oncology is available here. 
• The second article also by Burge and Lawson et al, published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, addressed the congruence between the last preferred and actual location of death among adult Nova Scotians who died from chronic disease. They identified emotional needs being met, nursing and family physician home visits, palliative care program involvement, and being at home for the majority of the last month as independent contributing factors to achievement of a home death among those who voiced the desire to do so.
  

Please click here to download a copy of the presentation on Primary Palliative Care at the Family Physicians conference in Slovenia.

Nepal has many challenges in providing healthcare to 83% of its population who live in rural areas, particularly relating to its low-income status and its mountainous terrain which makes health services in many remote areas difficult to sustain. However, Nepal is committed to training GPs to work in the rural areas and these doctors have been identified as key to developing appropriate and affordable palliative care. Primary palliative care featured prominently in a recent forum hosted by the Nepalese Association for Palliative Care (NAPCare) to promote the development of a national strategy for palliative care. A fuller report can be read at: http://www.ehospice.com/ArticleView/tabid/10686/ArticleId/18769/language/en-GB/View.aspx

This biennial international conference was held in Munich, Germany from 9 to 12 September 2015. Professor Scott Murray and Dr Joel Rhee of IPPCN co-chaired the session on Advance Care Planning in Primary Care.