Treasurer visits Catholic Healthcare home to recognise nurses
September 11, 2026
St Vincent’s and the University of Notre Dame are embarking on a world-first joint study to investigate whether palliative care biography services can benefit terminally ill people.
Biography services involve a volunteer biographer working with a palliative care patient to create a memoir of the patient’s life using words and pictures. These collaborative sessions usually take place over several days or even weeks as the patient approaches the end of their life, with the aim typically being to produce a book with stories and photographs of the patient’s life.
St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney’s Sacred Heart palliative care service was the first in NSW to introduce a volunteer biography service, which has since become one of the largest dedicated biography services in Australia.
The premise of the study – the first of its kind in the world – is that while volunteer biography services have been running in palliative care services for a number of years, no one has yet investigated their impact on patients, family members and the volunteers themselves.
Anecdotal evidence suggests biography services have an overwhelmingly powerful and positive affect – on patient and volunteer alike.
For example, palliative care patient Matthew Cumming – a keen sailor who had received a diagnosis of stage-four prostate cancer in 2020 – was matched with volunteer biographer Kirsten Tilgals at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney in 2025.
“The process itself gave me purpose, and the biography was a surprise in terms of, ‘Yeah, I have done some great and interesting things,” Matthew said.
“That makes you feel good about yourself.”
The study will look at the impact of palliative care biography services on volunteers, palliative care patients, family members (current and bereaved), volunteer managers and referrers. The aim is to interview more than 100 people in a large qualitative study.
The results will help palliative care departments make decisions on where to continue or introduce these services. They will also be used to determine if biography services can be useful for other people experiencing existential distress in the face of serious illnesses such as dementia or neurological disorders.
Read more about the study at the Sydney Morning Herald.
