The quality of death: ranking end-of-life care across the world.

Title

The quality of death: ranking end-of-life care across the world.

Creator

Economist Intelligence Unit

Date

2010

Subject

Health Services; Benefits of PPC

Description

Quality of life is a common phrase. The majority of human endeavours are ostensibly aimed at improving quality of life, whether for the individual or the community, and the concept ultimately informs most aspects of public policy and private enterprise. Advancements in healthcare have been responsible for the most significant quality-of-life gains in the recent past: that humans are (on average) living longer, and more healthily than ever, is well established. But “quality of death” is another matter.Death, although inevitable, is distressing to contemplate and in many cultures is taboo. Even where the issue can be openly discussed, the obligations implied by the Hippocratic oath—rightly the starting point for all curative medicine—do not fit easily with the demands of end-of-life palliative care, where the patient’s recovery is unlikely and instead the task falls to the physician (or, more often, caregiver) to minimise suffering as death approaches. Too often such care is simply not available: according to the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance, while more than 100m people would benefit from hospice and palliative care annually (including family and carers who need help and assistance in caring), less than 8% of those in need access it.
2010

Rights

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

Type

Journal Article

Citation List Month

Backlog

Citation

Economist Intelligence Unit, “The quality of death: ranking end-of-life care across the world.,” Pediatric Palliative Care Library, accessed March 29, 2024, https://pedpalascnetlibrary.omeka.net/items/show/13830.