When a person has a serious illness, palliative care aims to improve that person’s quality of life.
Articles on Death and dying
Displaying 21 - 40 of 45 articles
Although ‘Game of Thrones’ -style funeral pyres are still out of bounds, Americans are increasingly turning to cheaper, greener and more meaningful ways to dispose of their loved ones’ bodies.
Public opinion, shifting views in the health profession and international trends allowing assisted dying mean it will be lawful in Australia at some point. But will it be lawful in Victoria soon?
Just because a person is dying does not mean that he or she is in a state of panic. Here’s an example of how one woman, through a well-lived life, remained at peace as she faced death.
It is likely that, ironically, any legalisation of euthanasia in this country will actually hinder the care of those most in need.
At least one-third of patients receive non-beneficial treatments at the end of their life. Having a good advance care directive that you share with others helps them know and respect your wishes.
Putting the unsayable into words makes it easier to bear, for both the writers and those reading them.
It is rare to hear from people in their tenth or eleventh decade but their voices are crucial to shaping end-of-life care services.
Why thinking about death makes us more religious, conservative and prejudiced.
How best do we teach our kids that the world is not always as we’d like it to be? The ‘when’ can be out of parents’ control, but there are parts of the ‘how’ that are more manageable.
The UK’s palliative care is excellent - but that hasn’t prevented scandals like the Liverpool Care Pathway and Mid-staffs.
Most people in western societies die in hospital or in institutional care. Keeping death out of sight and out of mind means few people have real experience of death and dying.
Systemic change is need to ensure that patients’ voices are heard when doctors make decisions about end-of-life care.
The internet and social media has turned a private death into a very public one.
Conversations around end-of-life medical care can be challenging. Consider someone I’ll call Mrs. Jones, an elderly patient with advanced heart disease. When her doctor asked her to discuss the kind of…
When I was three years old my brother was born. He had a heart condition, and after being in and out of hospital for the whole of his little life, he died when I was five. The time after he was gone was…
Among comic book fans, there’s the joke that the only characters in superhero comics who stay dead are Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents, and Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. For everybody else…
Every year around half a million people die in England. The success of medicine over the past decades has led to a sustained rise in the average human life expectancy: a third of children born today will…
Even before its second reading in the House of Lords, Lord Falconer’s assisted dying bill has been stirring up controversy. High level support for the bill from important religious leaders such as former…
Debate about euthanasia flares up in Australia every few months but, for some reason, it never gets very far. The latest round started late last month, when urologist and campaigner for voluntary euthanasia…
Top contributors
-
Research Fellow, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne
-
Professor Emeritus of Death Studies, University of Bath
-
Palliative Medicine Physician, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne
-
Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University
-
Professor of Law, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology
-
Distinguished Professor, Professor of End-of-Life Law and Regulation, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology
-
Assistant Professor of Communications, Elon University
-
Professor, University of Stirling
-
NIHR Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant in Palliative Medicine, King's College London
-
Professor of Medicine, University of Florida
-
Palliative Care Physician, Barwon Health
-
Professor, English and Folklore Studies, University of Oregon
-
Senior Specialist in Intensive Care and Head of Clinical Unit in Ethics and Health Law, University of Newcastle
-
Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, University of Oxford
-
Professor of Law, Wake Forest University