How Will You Die?

The author of ” How We Die” died himself this week. . He was a doctor believed that death was messy and ugly and and patients should not be offered fruitless aggressive treatment that made death more abhorent.

“Beyond its descriptions of ruptured embolisms, spreading metastases and bodily functions run amok, “How We Die” was a criticism of a medical profession that saw death as an enemy to be engaged, frequently beyond the point of futility.”

The Times obituary said. “In chiding physicians, Dr. Nuland, a surgeon at Yale-New Haven Hospital for three decades, pointed the finger at himself, confessing that on more than one occasion he had persuaded dying patients to accept aggressive treatments that intensified their suffering and robbed them of an easier death.”

Family centered care is the underlying framework of palliative and hospice care was in full bore at the time he wrote the book.This movement took this messy and ugly last phase of life and tried to make it comfortable and open to the family again.

Palliative and hospice care address both the person’s and family’s needs and offers them support as well. Palliative and hospice care are team-oriented approaches. These teams are interdisciplinary, meaning that there will be professionals with all kinds of different skills and specialties