The modern concept of palliative care arose in response to the need to care for patients with advanced disease and their families by combining science and humanity. 

Its founder, Cicely Saunders, was a British nurse, social worker and physician who had the vision and ideal of providing her patients with this subject of care. To achieve this, she created St. Cristhopher's Hospice in London in 1967: the first hospital to unite expert pain and symptom management with compassionate care, research and teaching . Since then such networks have sprung up all over the world. 

There are currently 375 Palliative Care services in Spain, according to the EAPC ATLAS of Palliative Care in Europe 2013, an international study led by the ATLANTES program of the Institute for Culture and Society program of the University of Navarra at partnership with the University of Glasgow and association European Palliative Care. However, more than 200,000 citizens with advanced or terminal illnesses and their more than one million family members are in need of these services, experts estimate. 

In a May 24 statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) urges all countries to include attendance palliative care as an essential component of health care systems, in line with efforts to achieve universal health coverage. 

In this sense, the WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. There is no doubt that an illness does not only affect the physical part, but that it impacts on all areas of the person and his or her family. That is why palliative care is focused on symptom control and the search for an optimal physical, psychological, social and spiritual status . 

This work runs to position of a group multidisciplinary of professionals in which nurses are core topic. Approximately forty percent of the care activity in palliative care corresponds to Nursing, therefore all professionals need specific training in this area. According to a study on the opinion of nursing students taking a subject on this subject, the specialized training provides a complete vision of the discipline, where the person is at the center of care and where students are prepared to care for patients with advanced disease. This training is essential to achieve the goal suggested by the WHO to integrate palliative care into the different levels of care.

Caring for these sick people and their families requires a professional commitment and staff. The nurse financial aid and accompanies, and for this dedication must develop a caring interpersonal relationship with the patient: listen to him, get to know him better, work on complicity, show him that she is at his side to care for him and pamper him. The challenge does not consist in having the latest technical advance, but in accompanying the patient during a delicate status . This presence of the nurse (being with and for the patient) is highly valued and, moreover, is one of the most relieving and helpful interventions. 

Providing such care involves a specific training and an environment that promotes humanity without losing science. Those who have obtained this knowledge, in the form of Degree or Master's Degree, claim that they have received unexpected lessons, teachings that have changed them professionally and personally. And while teaching may concern individual professionals, reflection on caring for the person in this technological age is a life-giving task for all.