Death & Dying

How Hospitals Shape End of Life Care
Summary of Sharon. Kaufman, PhD Presentation to
California Coalition for Compassionate Care
Steering Committee Meeting June 3, 2005
Excerpted from Minutes of Meeting

Sharon Kaufman, Ph.D. Professor of Medical Anthropology at UC San Francisco recently published a book entitled, And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. (2005, NY: Scribner). Dr. Kaufman said in her role as a medical anthropologist she “makes the strange, familiar; and makes the familiar, strange.” She described her recent research about the culture of hospitals and how they influence the “problem of death,” which she defined as people dying with too much technology and not enough humanity.

Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), is a national consumer engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life, supported by a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Caring Connections
-Provides free resources, information and motivation for actively learning about end-of-life resources.
-Promotes awareness of and engagement in efforts to increase access to quality end-of-life care.
-Helps people connect with the resources they need, when they need them.
-Brings together community, state and national partners working to improve end-of-life care.

A gressroots project to improve end of life care, this film sheds light on the 21st century American struggle with communication and preparation at the end-of-life. Throughout the film, there are intimate accounts of the emotional, spiritual, physical and social burdens associated with the historical shift that has occurred with dying. Forty years ago, most people experienced a quick death, but today we are more likely to suffer a slow, incremental dying process.

Consider the Conversation examines multiple perspectives on end-of-life care and includes information and experiences gathered from interviews with patients, family members, doctors, nurses, clergy, social workers, and national experts on death and dying. The film includes in-depth interviews with 40+ individuals from California, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin. 62 “person on the street” interviews were also conducted in New York City in April of 2010.

In thousands of ways, social workers help people help themselves. People of every age. From every background. In every corner of the country - wherever we’re needed - starting here and now. Welcome to your source for professional advice, inspiring stories - even a social worker directory. Social workers. Help starts here. This website is provided by the National Association of Social Workers and includes sections on Seniors and Aging, Issues and Answers, Mind and Spirit. The Senior section includes in-depth look issues of import, real life stories shared, resources of value, current trends, helpful tip, options and other information helpful for finding one’s way through the senior years. The Health and Well Being section includes information related to death and dying, living with illness, pain management, etc. The Mind and Spirit section includes orientation to various mental illnesses, grief & loss and other helpful information.

The Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live is a new book by Dr. Scott Eberle, Medical Director, Hospice of Petaluma. “This book is itself a rite of passage. Extraordinary insights shared by two remarkable people, one dying, the other the inner life and decisions of the physician and friend attending this fine fellow preparing to head into death. This is the best work of its sort I have come across. There are so many levels, so many books in this book that it might well become a teaching text in many classrooms.” Stephen Levine, author of Who Dies?, Healing into Life and Death, and A Year to Live