Nine in ten UK palliative care researchers want to continue the work; fewer than seven in ten expect they will be able to

A UK-wide mixed-methods online survey of 256 people conducting palliative and end-of-life care research — most working in universities, two-thirds full-time, fewer than half on a permanent contract — found that 90% wished to continue this research over the next five years, but only 69% believed it likely that they would be able to. Audit/Data The principal barriers named were lack of funding (56%), heavy workload (42%), job insecurity (39%) and limited career progression (33%). Respondents identified five specific needs to sustain the field: greater visibility of palliative and end-of-life care as a research priority, increased and more targeted funding, more opportunities for collaboration, protected research time, and support to build a more diverse research community.

This is a workforce and infrastructure finding rather than a clinical one, but it bears directly on the evidence base that palliative care services, commissioners and guideline-writers will have available to draw on. A field where nine in ten of its own researchers want to stay but only seven in ten expect to be able to is not a capacity problem for the future — the survey describes funding, workload and job insecurity as active, present-day attrition pressures on a research base that end-of-life care policy and service design already depend on.