Dying In America

Author : Institute of Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309303133
Total Pages : 638 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dying in America written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are necessary and desired by patients, and the lack of coordination among programs increases risks to patients and creates avoidable burdens on them and their families. Dying in America is a study of the current state of health care for persons of all ages who are nearing the end of life. Death is not a strictly medical event. Ideally, health care for those nearing the end of life harmonizes with social, psychological, and spiritual support. All people with advanced illnesses who may be approaching the end of life are entitled to access to high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based care, consistent with their wishes. Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families. The findings and recommendations of this report will address the needs of patients and their families and assist policy makers, clinicians and their educational and credentialing bodies, leaders of health care delivery and financing organizations, researchers, public and private funders, religious and community leaders, advocates of better care, journalists, and the public to provide the best care possible for people nearing the end of life.

Author : Jonathan M. Metzl
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 1541644964
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dying of Whiteness written by Jonathan M. Metzl and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences -- even for the white voters they promise to help. In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as physician Jonathan M. Metzl shows in Dying of Whiteness, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. He shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. Now updated with a new afterword, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation rather than chasing false promises of supremacy. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

Author : Andrea Fontana
Publisher : Polity
ISBN 13 : 0745639151
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Death and Dying in America written by Andrea Fontana and published by Polity. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging new book takes a fresh approach to the major topics surrounding the processes and rituals of death and dying in the United States. It emphasizes individual experiences and personal reactions to death as well as placing mortality within a wider social context, drawing on theoretical frameworks, empirical research and popular culture. Throughout the text the authors highlight the importance of two key factors in American society which determine who dies and under what circumstances: persistent social inequality and the American consumerist ethic. These features are explored through a discussion of topics ranging from debates about euthanasia to deaths resulting from war and terrorism; from the death of a child to children’s experience of grieving and bereavement; and from beliefs about life after death to more practical issues such as the disposal of the dead body. Drawing on sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and historical research the authors present the salient features of death and dying for upper-level students across the social sciences. For anyone interested in learning more about the end of life, this book will provide a useful and accessible perspective on the uniquely American understanding of death and dying.

Author : Committee on Care at the End of Life
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309518253
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Approaching Death written by Committee on Care at the End of Life and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-10-30 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the end of life makes its inevitable appearance, people should be able to expect reliable, humane, and effective caregiving. Yet too many dying people suffer unnecessarily. While an "overtreated" dying is feared, untreated pain or emotional abandonment are equally frightening. Approaching Death reflects a wide-ranging effort to understand what we know about care at the end of life, what we have yet to learn, and what we know but do not adequately apply. It seeks to build understanding of what constitutes good care for the dying and offers recommendations to decisionmakers that address specific barriers to achieving good care. This volume offers a profile of when, where, and how Americans die. It examines the dimensions of caring at the end of life: Determining diagnosis and prognosis and communicating these to patient and family. Establishing clinical and personal goals. Matching physical, psychological, spiritual, and practical care strategies to the patient's values and circumstances. Approaching Death considers the dying experience in hospitals, nursing homes, and other settings and the role of interdisciplinary teams and managed care. It offers perspectives on quality measurement and improvement, the role of practice guidelines, cost concerns, and legal issues such as assisted suicide. The book proposes how health professionals can become better prepared to care well for those who are dying and to understand that these are not patients for whom "nothing can be done."

Author : Anne Case
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691217068
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism written by Anne Case and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. This critically important book paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline, and provides solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

Author : Steve Brodner
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living & Dying in America written by Steve Brodner and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living & Dying in America includes many lovingly drawn portraits of those who died in the pandemic and of those who displayed extraordinary strength, decency, courage, and endurance. But Brodner does not ignore those who perpetuated the pandemic in word or deed: he also etches in acid caricature those public servants and private entrepreneurs who preyed upon the public, spread lies, and aided the virus' spread through their ignorance, incompetence, and malfeasance. Released via social media, the drawings range from quick, expertly realized sketches to elaborate paintings to carefully rendered mixed media, depending on how much time and stamina and inspiration he had left at the end of the day. Each spontaneously drawn or painted image is accompanied by a brief biography of those who died, or a short summary of the person's conduct or the event depicted. Taken as a whole, Living & Dying in America is a chronicle of those who died and those who honorably served the living - as well as an indictment of those institutions and political figures who betrayed the public trust. It is a searing and essential moral document, written and drawn on a daily basis with feverish intensity by one of the great forces of American cartooning.

Author : Ann Neumann
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807076996
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Good Death written by Ann Neumann and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann’s father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver—cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying. Neumann struggled to put her life back in order and found herself haunted by a question: Was her father’s death a good death? The way we talk about dying and the way we actually die are two very different things, she discovered, and many of us are shielded from what death actually looks like. To gain a better understanding, Neumann became a hospice volunteer and set out to discover what a good death is today. She attended conferences, academic lectures, and grief sessions in church basements. She went to Montana to talk with the attorney who successfully argued for the legalization of aid in dying, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to listen to “pro-life” groups who believe the removal of feeding tubes from some patients is tantamount to murder. Above all, she listened to the stories of those who were close to death. What Neumann found is that death in contemporary America is much more complicated than we think. Medical technologies and increased life expectancies have changed the very definition of medical death. And although death is our common fate, it is also a divisive issue that we all experience differently. What constitutes a good death is unique to each of us, depending on our age, race, economic status, culture, and beliefs. What’s more, differing concepts of choice, autonomy, and consent make death a contested landscape, governed by social, medical, legal, and religious systems. In these pages, Neumann brings us intimate portraits of the nurses, patients, bishops, bioethicists, and activists who are shaping the way we die. The Good Death presents a fearless examination of how we approach death, and how those of us close to dying loved ones live in death’s wake.

Author : Mara Buchbinder
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520380223
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scripting Death written by Mara Buchbinder and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the legalization of assisted dying is changing our lives. Over the past five years, medical aid-in-dying (also known as assisted suicide) has expanded rapidly in the United States and is now legally available to one in five Americans. This growing social and political movement heralds the possibility of a new era of choice in dying. Yet very little is publicly known about how medical aid-in-dying laws affect ordinary citizens once they are put into practice. Sociological studies of new health policies have repeatedly demonstrated that the realities often fall short of advocacy visions, raising questions about how much choice and control aid-in-dying actually affords. Scripting Death chronicles two years of ethnographic research documenting the implementation of Vermont’s 2013 Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. Author Mara Buchbinder weaves together stories collected from patients, caregivers, health care providers, activists, and legislators to illustrate how they navigate aid-in-dying as a new medical frontier in the aftermath of legalization. Scripting Death explains how medical aid-in-dying works, what motivates people to pursue it, and ultimately, why upholding the “right to die” is very different from ensuring access to this life-ending procedure. This unprecedented, in-depth account uses the case of assisted death as an entry point into ongoing cultural conversations about the changing landscape of death and dying in the United States.

Author : Institute of Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309084377
Total Pages : 713 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Children Die written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-02-09 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death of a child is a special sorrow. No matter the circumstances, a child's death is a life-altering experience. Except for the child who dies suddenly and without forewarning, physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel usually play a central role in the lives of children who die and their families. At best, these professionals will exemplify "medicine with a heart." At worst, families' encounters with the health care system will leave them with enduring painful memories, anger, and regrets. When Children Die examines what we know about the needs of these children and their families, the extent to which such needs areâ€"and are notâ€"being met, and what can be done to provide more competent, compassionate, and consistent care. The book offers recommendations for involving child patients in treatment decisions, communicating with parents, strengthening the organization and delivery of services, developing support programs for bereaved families, improving public and private insurance, training health professionals, and more. It argues that taking these steps will improve the care of children who survive as well as those who do notâ€"and will likewise help all families who suffer with their seriously ill or injured child. Featuring illustrative case histories, the book discusses patterns of childhood death and explores the basic elements of physical, emotional, spiritual, and practical care for children and families experiencing a child's life-threatening illness or injury.

Author : Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0375703837
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book This Republic of Suffering written by Drew Gilpin Faust and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.