Approaching Death

Approaching Death
Author: Committee on Care at the End of Life
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 1997-10-30
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309518253

When the end of life makes its inevitable appearance, people should be able to expect reliable, humane, and effective caregiving. Yet too many dying people suffer unnecessarily. While an "overtreated" dying is feared, untreated pain or emotional abandonment are equally frightening. Approaching Death reflects a wide-ranging effort to understand what we know about care at the end of life, what we have yet to learn, and what we know but do not adequately apply. It seeks to build understanding of what constitutes good care for the dying and offers recommendations to decisionmakers that address specific barriers to achieving good care. This volume offers a profile of when, where, and how Americans die. It examines the dimensions of caring at the end of life: Determining diagnosis and prognosis and communicating these to patient and family. Establishing clinical and personal goals. Matching physical, psychological, spiritual, and practical care strategies to the patient's values and circumstances. Approaching Death considers the dying experience in hospitals, nursing homes, and other settings and the role of interdisciplinary teams and managed care. It offers perspectives on quality measurement and improvement, the role of practice guidelines, cost concerns, and legal issues such as assisted suicide. The book proposes how health professionals can become better prepared to care well for those who are dying and to understand that these are not patients for whom "nothing can be done."

Quest for a New Death

Quest for a New Death
Author: Mohammad Samir Hossain Ph. D.
Publisher: Booksurge Publishing
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2007-11-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781419684548

The perception of the permanent cessation of existence with death has no scientific basis. Epistemologically, it is wrong. The perception denoting existence after death is scientifically unapproachable, but epistemologically acceptable. The perception of ceasing to exist is also unhealthy and causing continuous harmful changes at personal and social levels. Thus healthy accommodation of the phenomenon of death is practically absent. So death should be regarded as something very significant that does not bring absolute end to one's existence. View towards moral attitude is strongly connected to this concept. Adoption of stronger morality by restraining the desire for materialistic life can lead to a satisfactory accommodation of this concept. Evidences from history also support it. Addition of this methodologically redefined concept of death in our life should lead us to a better and healthier attitude with a healthy accommodation of the phenomenon of death in persons and thus society.

National Vital Statistics Reports

National Vital Statistics Reports
Author: National Center for Health Statistics (U.S.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2011
Genre: Mortality
ISBN:

This periodical publishes birth, death, marriage, and divorce provisional statistics for the United States.

Death

Death
Author: Todd May
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317488482

The fact that we will die, and that our death can come at any time, pervades the entirety of our living. There are many ways to think about and deal with death. Among those ways, however, a good number of them are attempts to escape its grip. In this book, Todd May seeks to confront death in its power. He considers the possibility that our mortal deaths are the end of us, and asks what this might mean for our living. What lessons can we draw from our mortality? And how might we live as creatures who die, and who know we are going to die? In answering these questions, May brings together two divergent perspectives on death. The first holds that death is not an evil, or at least that immortality would be far worse than dying. The second holds that death is indeed an evil, and that there is no escaping that fact. May shows that if we are to live with death, we need to hold these two perspectives together. Their convergence yields both a beauty and a tragedy to our living that are inextricably entwined.Drawing on the thoughts of many philosophers and writers - ancient and modern - as well as his own experience, May puts forward a particular view of how we might think about and, more importantly, live our lives in view of the inescapability of our dying. In the end, he argues, it is precisely the contingency of our lives that must be grasped and which must be folded into the hours or years that remain to each of us, so that we can live each moment as though it were at once a link to an uncertain future and yet perhaps the only link we have left.