Table 1. Contrasting and comparing the elements of rehabilitation and palliative care.

	Rehabilitation	Palliative care
History and key relationships	World War I. Disablement and disability	The Cold War. Cancer and death
Focus area and concepts	Functionability, coping ability, hope of normality and inclusion in society, ICF	Relief of suffering, hope of meaningfulness in the history of life and in everyday life, total pain
Perspective	Short- and long-term goals, function Development or active maintenance Control Doing and becoming	Mainly shorts-term goals Death as a natural process Relatedness Being
Norms	Norm of activity – to contribute, take part	Passiveness is legitimized; to receive/to draw back
Expanded target groups	From disabled persons to ‘not yet disabled persons’ in terms of health conditions more broadly spoken Expanding to advanced stages of the disease	From terminal ill cancer patients to all persons suffering from life threatening illness + their relatives Expanding to earlier stages of the disease
Compliant to	Goal setting and functionality Discourse of recovery The individual body as the arena for change	End-of-life conversations, the acceptance of death etc.