Death And Dying: Expanding Palliative Care

A milestone multi-year study published in 1995 startled the medical world when it revealed that about half the hospital doctors treating terminally ill people were unaware when their patients had not wanted aggressive, life-extending treatments and that about half those who died in their care had pain that might have been abated. Equally shocking, the…

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Death And Dying: An Emerging Conversation

Editor’s note: On Wednesday, Medicare announced that it would reimburse doctors for end-of-life counseling. It’s part of an emerging conversation about end-of-life issues and the policy changes needed to give people more control over what happens to them in their final days.  This three-part series of stories by KHI News Service, and a video produced in…

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Death Cafes: Discussing death, and especially life

Candle

On a Wednesday evening in October, about 20 people gathered in a St. Joseph, Missouri, coffee shop to talk about death. It’s called a Death Cafe, and it’s part of an international movement to get people talking about death and dying. It started in the U.K. in 2011 and, soon after that, hospice social worker…

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