- The COVID-19 pandemic has seen the ultimate medicalised death, with patients dying in intensive care with little communication with their families
- Technological and medical advances have fuelled the idea that science can defeat death, increasing the over-reliance on medical interventions, and further alienating communities
- Societies overwhelmingly prioritise avoiding death, rather than reducing unnecessary suffering, meaning too many people worldwide are dying a bad death
- Commission proposes a new vision for death and dying, with greater community involvement alongside health and social care services, and increased bereavement support
- Commission also calls for improvements in death literacy, and addressing widespread inequalities that continue throughout life and into death
Health and social systems around the world are failing to give appropriate, compassionate care to people who are dying and their families. According to a new Lancet Commission, today’s current overemphasis on aggressive treatments to prolong life, vast global inequities in palliative care access, and high end-of-life medical costs have lead millions of people to suffer unnecessarily at the end of life, reports EurekAlert.
Death and dying
The Commission calls for public attitudes to death and dying to be rebalanced, away from a narrow, medicalised approach towards a compassionate community model, where communities and families work with health and social care services to care for people dying.
Bringing together experts in health and social care, social science, economics, philosophy, political science, theology, community work, as well as patient and community activists, the Commission has analysed how societies around the world perceive death and care for people dying, providing recommendations to policy makers, governments, civil society, and health and social care systems.
The Commission focuses primarily on the time from when a person is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness or injury, to their death and the bereavement affecting the lives of those left behind – it does not cover sudden or violent deaths, deaths of children, or deaths due to injustice.
Over-medicalised, hidden away and feared
Over the past 60 years, dying has moved from the family and community setting to become primarily the concern of health systems. In the UK for example, only one in five people who require end of life care are at home, while about half are in hospital.
Global life expectancy has risen steadily from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.4 years in 2019. But, as people are living longer, they are living more of these additional years in poor health, with years lived with disability increasing from 8.6 years in 2000 to 10 years in 2019.
Prior to the 1950s, deaths were predominantly a result of acute disease or injury, with low involvement from doctors or technology. Today, the majority of deaths are from chronic disease, with a high level of involvement from doctors and technology. The idea that death can be defeated is further fuelled by advances in science and technology, which has also accelerated the over-reliance on medical interventions at the end of life.
And, as healthcare has moved centre stage, families and communities have been increasingly alienated. The language, knowledge, and confidence to support and manage dying have been slowly lost, further fuelling a dependence on health systems. Despite this, rather than being viewed as a professional responsibility for the doctor, and a right for all people and families who wish it, conversations about death and dying can be difficult and uncomfortable and too often happen in times of crisis. Often they don’t happen at all.
Worldwide, too many people are dying a bad death
While palliative care has gained attention as a specialty, over half of all deaths happen without palliative care or pain relief [2], and health and social inequalities persist in death.
Interventions often continue to the last days with minimal attention to suffering. Medical culture, fear of litigation, and financial incentives also contribute to overtreatment at the end of life, further fuelling institutional deaths and the sense that professionals must manage death.
Untreated suffering, vast inequalities, and aggressive medical treatments have come at a high cost. A disproportionate share of the total annual expenditure in high income countries goes towards treatment for those who die, suggesting that treatments at the end of life are being provided at a much higher threshold than for other treatments.
In high income countries, between 8% and 11.2% of annual health expenditure for the entire population is on the less than 1% who die that year . Care in the last month of life is costly and, in countries without universal health coverage, can be a cause of families falling into poverty.
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Source: EurokAlert
