Scott Murray, MD

Professor Scott Murray is the St. Columba’s Hospice Chair of Primary Palliative Care at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He leads the first palliative care research group based in an academic department of family medicine – the Primary Palliative Care Research Group at the University of Edinburgh.

He has wide experience of research and evaluation in many African countries. By employing innovative, longitudinal qualitative research he has popularized the concept of typical trajectories of decline in the last years of life, and a radical redesign of traditional palliative care services. He is involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching advocating that palliative care be integrated in the management of all advanced diseases.

He chairs the International Primary Palliative Care Network, which seeks to encourage research and advocacy for a palliative care approach to be adopted internationally in primary care. He recently led a European Association for Palliative Care Taskforce to produce a toolkit for national palliative care development in the community, now translated into French and German. He has helped to develop The Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool, a validated tool to help generalists identify patients for palliative care that is now used in many countries.

Professor Murray joined the IAHPC Board in 2010 and has brought a primary care and African perspective to various working groups and IAHPC publications.His vision is that good palliative care should be available to everyone, everywhere, by generalists supported by specialists. He is on a World Health Organization Committee to inform the development of integrated palliative care. He advocates for a new public health – a health promoting approach in palliative care whereby individuals and communities are encouraged to call on their own individual and community resources and assets so that people can live, and then die, as well as possible. In 2012, he received an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for services to palliative care.

Outside of palliative care, Professor Murray enjoys tennis and golf and returning to Africa where he enjoyed bringing up a young family with his wife Mary.

Download Prof. Scott Murray’s slide of the five key challenges facing palliative care in the next decade: Palliative care for all diseases, all times, all dimensions, all settings and all countries).

@scottamurrayed