Palliative Care

BACKGROUND

In his 1950 collection Shorts the great English/American poet, W.H. Auden, wrote:

“. . .
Give me a doctor, partridge plump,
Short in the leg and broad in the rump,
An endomorph with gentle hands,
Who’ll never make absurd demands
That I abandon all my vices
Nor pull a long face in a crisis,
But with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I have to die. . .”¹

OVERVIEW

Dying is part of life. A human being’s death is the inevitable conclusion of her or his life. You can’t have one without the other.

(Note: From henceforth in this monograph, except in actual cases or quoted material, we will use the feminine gender for patients, and the masculine gender for providers.)

While most people give little attention to this reality throughout the course of their lives, and many meet death with a feeling of, “Wait! Not now! I’m not ready yet!” physicians do not have that luxury or problem. Physicians know about death and dying, and many have first-hand experience with death in the course of their training. In the United States, the majority of people who die each year are over the age of 85.² Thanks to Medicare and Medicaid, nearly all of them are receiving medical care, so most physicians will have the opportunity to help patients and patients’ families deal with death and dying.

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