“When asked to think about their end-of-life planning, 75% of Canadians
express a desire to die in their own homes. Yet in actual fact, 70% of
Canadians die in hospital."
That's the summary of recent poll, as reported in the Ottawa Sun. I imagine there would be similar results in much of the developed world.
The article continues:
How we want our lives to end is not how they’re ending. That’s a tragedy. It’s also a clear sign that we need to adjust our public policy priorities to better reflect the needs of the people that the system was created to serve.
Right.
(Thanks to Dr. Susan Shaw for forwarding the article.)
That's the summary of recent poll, as reported in the Ottawa Sun. I imagine there would be similar results in much of the developed world.
The article continues:
How we want our lives to end is not how they’re ending. That’s a tragedy. It’s also a clear sign that we need to adjust our public policy priorities to better reflect the needs of the people that the system was created to serve.
Right.
(Thanks to Dr. Susan Shaw for forwarding the article.)
1 comment:
Such polls can also be deceptive. While I agree that end-of-life care and planning for death needs to be completely revisited by our healthcare systems and our society as a whole, these surveys reveal something different. My father always wanted to die at home but he died in a hospital. This was not a tragedy, however- his idea of dying at home was an aneurism in his sleep. The reality is not as neat- an emergency situation where he needed and wanted to get to the hospital to relieve his pain and discomfort and he passed peacefully with excellent and humane care (in Rome). Not arguing with the underlying principle of your post, just urging caution in interpretation. Because we avoid thinking about such situations, our stated preferences for the future are often quite divorced from what we want when we actually are faced with them.
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