The Construction of British Columbia's Palliative Care Benefits Policy and Implications for Nursing Practice

Nurses have a critical role to play in creating, implementing, critiquing, and advancing health policy within diverse contexts to ensure people living with life-limiting illness receive equitable and ethical access to palliative care services and programs. This article describes a critical analysis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy, politics & nursing practice politics & nursing practice, 2025-02, Vol.26 (1), p.74-84
Main Authors: Elliott, Carly, Brown, Helen, Wytenbroek, Lydia, Havaei, Farinaz Naz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
British Columbia
Discourse analysis
Female
Health Policy
Hospice and Palliative Care Nursing
Humans
Life threatening sickness
Male
Middle Aged
Nurse's Role
Palliative Care
Practice nurses
Professional practice
Urgency
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Summary:Nurses have a critical role to play in creating, implementing, critiquing, and advancing health policy within diverse contexts to ensure people living with life-limiting illness receive equitable and ethical access to palliative care services and programs. This article describes a critical analysis of the British Columbia's Palliative Care Benefits (BCPCB). The BCPCB is a provincial government program in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, that provides eligible residents with palliative care services at home. Utilizing Fairclough's Dialectical-Relational Critical Discourse Analysis, the study investigates the process by which BCPCB determines B.C. residents' eligibility and access to resources proportionate to their need, function, illness burden, and urgency. This article reviews the construction of palliative care in Canada and how current biomedical perspectives construct palliative care policy and services in B.C. The findings indicate that the BCPCB program produces vague, discriminatory, and ableist prognostication practices through the implementation of its eligibility policy. This article also suggests that palliative care nurses are optimally positioned for policy influence: to critique, disrupt, and transform the BCPCB Program and palliative care practices.
ISSN:1527-1544
1552-7468
1552-7468
DOI:10.1177/15271544241298656