Medicine’s Role in the “Good Death”
The way physicians care for patients who are close to death has changed substantially in the last 2 decades. Significantly, patients can now receive palliative care as a complement to disease treatment, and the importance of spending one’s last days at home or alert enough to speak with friends and family is widely recognized. But dying will never be easy, and the good death is still elusive. December issue's authors discuss medicine’s next steps in helping to make each person’s dying as comfortable and dignified as possible.