Social Support
Challenges of Home Palliative Care to Family Caregivers from the Perspective of Family Members
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yi-jung Liu
This study adopts a qualitative interview method with family members of patients, aiming to explore their perceptions, experiences, and suggestions regarding home palliative care. Several key themes emerged from the interviews: (1) The disadvantages of home palliative care were perceived to outweigh the advantages. These include insufficient home equipment and assistive devices, increased physical burden on caregivers, lack of caregiving knowledge among family members, infrequent home visits by medical staff, and inadequate psychosocial and spiritual support for patients and families; (2) Family members had varied emotional responses to the experience. Positive experiences included renewed appreciation for the patient's past contributions and love, fostering gratitude and affection. Negative experiences included concerns that the patient's physical care at home was inferior to hospital care, resulting in regret for choosing home-based palliative care; (3) The impact on family caregivers was largely negative, leading to increased psychological stress, strained relationships among caregivers, and disruption of normal routines, social life, and family dynamics. In conclusion, the role of the interdisciplinary palliative care team in home settings remains focused primarily on physical care—particularly pain relief, respiratory support, and prevention of constipation through medication. Psychological, social, and spiritual support mainly comes from the family, existing social networks, and religious communities, rather than the palliative care team. This study highlights current limitations in home palliative care services: healthcare teams lack the capacity to provide holistic support, and the integration of medical professionals with community resources is still insufficient.
Featured Global Crossroads of Care: Transnational Circulations and Inequalities in Traditional and Complementary Medicine
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Polina Palash
This preliminary research explores the transnational circulations of practitioners and users of traditional and complementary medicine, encompassing diverse healing practices that coexist with conventional medicine. These include both ancestral and more contemporary forms of healthcare, often emerging in response to a growing search for holistic approaches to health and wellbeing. While such practices have been widely examined in local contexts, their transnational dimensions remain underexplored in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. This contribution draws on a multi-sited ethnography conducted in Bali (Indonesia) and Koh Phangan (Thailand) between June and October 2024. These two locations represent emblematic global crossroads that attract mobile actors who engage with these forms of healing through their distinctive therapeutic landscapes (Gesler, 1992) and associated imaginaries. The research includes ethnographic interviews and participant observation with 16 practitioners and 13 users of traditional and complementary medicine, and is further complemented by digital ethnographic methods conducted between 2024 and 2025. By retracing the socio-spatial trajectories of these actors, preliminary findings reveal the porous boundaries between the categories of practitioners and users, seasonal patterns of mobility—primarily from Western countries and across similar global destinations for alternative healing practices—and their connection to digital nomadism. Social media and digital space emerge as central in shaping and sustaining these transnational circulations and networks. At the same time, the research highlights how socio-economic inequalities shape these forms of (im)mobility and the interactions with local populations.
