Talking about death better than ‘giving aggressive treatments to prolong life’

Death has become “over medicalised” and the public should be encouraged to discuss dying and grief, experts have said.

There's a call for shift in attitude towards palliative care, with more emphasis on compassion and less on giving medication that may prolong pain.

According to a new Lancet commission, an overemphasis on aggressive treatments to prolong life, global inequities in palliative care access, and high end-of-life medical costs have led to millions of people suffering unnecessarily at the end of their life.

The authors also note that the pandemic has made death and dying more prominent in daily life, while health systems have been “overwhelmed” when trying to care for those dying.

People often died alone, with families unable to say goodbye to loved ones or grieve together, the commission said – the effects of which will “resonate for years to come”.

The researchers argue that many people, mainly in low- and middle-income countries, have no access to end-of-life care, and particularly to opioids, while those in high-income countries may be overtreated.

Attitudes towards death and dying should be “rebalanced”, the authors conclude, away from a medicalised approach towards a “compassionate community model”, where families work with health and social care services to care for those dying.

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Source: The Telegraph, 31 January 2022