In 2014 I was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia.  I had written a broadly accessible novel with a central theme of palliative care, its aim to inspire,  delight, and enhance understanding of care at the end of life.

 

Three events triggered the publication of my novel, Acacia House.  First, my father’s painful death, denied palliative care because “he didn’t have cancer”.  Next, the closure of the hospice in which I’d nursed for ten years  - ostensibly to ‘spread palliative care more widely’.  Fourteen years later, working on Palliative Care WA’s Helpline, I realized how the word “palliative” still provoked fear in the community.  

 

I researched how to write and what to write. How to write an ethical novel?  It needed to promote human flourishing.  And it must empower the reader, offering more questions than answers.  What to write?  The palliative care communities in Australia, South Africa and Ireland inspired me.  My characters emerged.  My imagination was on fire.  I wrote.

 

I was awarded a PhD.  The novel was shortlisted for the TAG Hungerford Award.  The best literary agent in Australia snatched it up but no publisher would touch it.  “Palliative” wouldn’t sell. I self-published.  The novel received outstanding reviews. In a year, 700 books sold.  With little publicity, it moved by word of mouth.

 

I surveyed fifty readers.  10% worked in palliative care, 65% had encountered palliative care. 96% stated that the novel prompted valuable discussion - 78% on hospice care, 78% care at home, 56% grief and bereavement and 67% voluntary assisted dying.  

 

The survey and accompanying reader’s comments demonstrate beyond doubt the worth of fiction to promote discussion and dispel discomfiture around end of life care.