Alex Broom. Dying: A Social Perspective on the End of Life. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015 (original) (raw)

2016, Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement

Death is the final democratic process we experience; it is one that fractures our remaining social ties. The dramatic changes in caregiving favored by the availability of drugs, hospital assistance, and increased life expectancy have deeply changed the screenplay of death. Today, dying has become the most difficult and conflicted experience people in the West face, but it has received little attention until recently. The scenario has changed further due to the availability of hospices and nursing homes, where sufferers, relatives, care givers, and health professionals meet to secure ''the good death.'' Do we really know what ''the good death'' is and how to achieve it? This book aims to dissect the most critical aspects of the end of life in institutional settings (nursing homes, hospices, hospitals). Nowadays, death often comes after a longlasting terminal phase of multiple coexisting diseases, sometimes spent in chronically critically ill conditions marked by multiple relapses, hospital admissions, and transient recoveries that rouse hope of healing. These circumstances are stressful for patients, care givers, and health professional relationships, which then impair even the best care and its perception. Much of a person's end of life is spent in hospices, nursing homes and palliative care units, where the relational dynamics between the patient, his or her relatives, family and professional care givers, and health professional are at stake.