Palliative care is complex, patient focused, context dependent and multi professional. This fits case study research, which focuses on a case in context (individual, group or organization), and employs a flexible range of methods to collect data collaboratively from multiple sources 1. Some have claimed that case study is insufficiently rigorous, and does not produce generalisable findings 2. These charges will be refuted and I argue that case study has: 1. The ability to deal with complex situations, such as palliative care provision. 2. A focus on the context of care. Data are not stripped of the situational factors affecting the phenomenon. 3. Palliative care practice is congruent with its realistic approach, relevant to structure, process and outcome. 4. Case study lends itself to multiprofessional research, with investigation from many perspectives using a combination of research methods. 5. The approach is rigorously adaptable, meeting different practical, ethical and theoretical conditions. 6. It is appropriate where there is no strong theory to guide research, such as in palliative care. 7. The use of some other approaches has been found difficult in palliative care, because of problems measuring outcomes. These strengths of the case study approach for palliative care will be illustrated with reference to a case study investigating access to community palliative care. Case study can be a powerful tool for service improvement because its findings are of direct relevance to service provision. Case study has been tried and tested in other fields (such as education). We should learn from these, and embrace case study as an appropriate method in palliative care research.

References
1. Yin, R.K. 2003. Case study research.Thousand Oaks. Sage.
2. Jensen, J. L. & Rodgers, R. 2001. Cumulating the intellectual gold of case study research. Public Administration Review, 61(2): 235-246.