Hospice and Attitudes toward Death
Unitie Mance
Soc 304: Social Gerontology
Kristin Bachman
February 27, 2012

A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.
Stewart Alsop
Death, dying and bereavement finds a way of impacting everyday living. Images of real or fictional death are often while watching television or movies. Death can impact people on a personal and a cultural level. This essay will entail how cultural attitudes toward dying, death, and bereavement have changed. While examining hospice, the care obtained, and its role in this shift.
Cultural attitudes toward dying, death, and bereavement have changed.
There are enormous variations across societies and over time in attitudes toward death. Some societies engage in death avoidance while others celebrate the communion between the living and the dead. In the United States there has been an immense change in the process of dying from past centuries to the present. “This change is partly due to a shift in the average age of death and the association of dying with old age” (Aubrey, 2007). It is also caused by a change in the causes of death. At one time most people died from critical illnesses that struck quickly. Now people are more likely to die from a chronic illness that leads to a slow death. The setting for death has also changed. Most deaths in the past occurred in the home. Now death typically takes place in a medical setting such as a hospital or nursing home.
Certain people prepare for death by engaging in a life evaluation. A life evaluation is a process of reminiscing over one's experiences and finding meaning in past events. It helps the individual to view his or her life as having veracity. “Modern health technology has now made it probable to prolong life indefinitely; people face ethical and legal issues regarding the right to die” (Aubrey, 2007). No issue has raised more controversy than euthanasia. There are two types of euthanasia. The less debated form is passive euthanasia, the withholding or withdrawal of treatment. Active euthanasia, also known as assisted suicide, remains in legal limbo. Although it is illegal in most of the Western world, public opinion supports it under certain conditions.
Hospice, the care obtained, and its role in this shift
Hospices are dedicated to providing death with dignity, free of pain. “Hospices have expanded in the United States since payment for hospice care was allowed under Medicare” (Quadagno, 2011). Although hospice care saves little in terms of public expenses, it fulfills another objective, which of providing high -quality cares at the end of life. Hospice care may be provided in several different settings including a hospital, a nursing home, or an individual's home. “The first hospices are believed to have originated in the 11th century, around 1065, when for the first time the incurably ill were permitted into places dedicated to treatment by Crusaders” (Milton, 2007). Cicely Saunders a British registered nurse who urbanized with a dying Polish refugee helped solidify ideas that terminally ill patients needed empathetic care to help address their fears and anxieties as well as palliative comfort for physical symptoms. “Saunders emphasized focusing on the patient rather than the disease and introduced the notion of 'total pain', which included psychological and spiritual as well as the physical aspects” (Clark, 2006). She investigated with a wide range of opioids for managing physical pain but also incorporated the needs of the patient's family.
Hospice has faced resistance springing from various factors, including professional or cultural taboos against open communication about death among physicians or the wider population, discomfort with unfamiliar medical techniques, and professional callousness towards the terminally ill. Nevertheless, the movement has, with national differences in focus and application, spread throughout the world (Connor, 2009).
Death is a reality of life, a condition of living. Today death is relegated to the closet and avoided as an unwanted intruder. While older people often address the subject openly in order to confront their own finitude, family members usually suppress it as morbid. Today death has been dismissed from the home to the nursing home and hospital, the places where two-thirds of the American population die. In past times death usually occurred at home, and funeral events were generally community affairs.
The vital issue in regard to attitudes about death is the way that individuals feel about their own mortality, the way family members and health professionals deal with persons for whom death is an oncoming reality, and social customs and behavior respecting death. While openness about death appears to be on the rise, This essay has just entailed how cultural attitudes toward dying, death, and bereavement have changed. While examining hospice, the care obtained, and its role in this shift.

References Aubrey (2007). "Life Span Extension Research and Public Debate: Societal Considerations" Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology
Connor S (2009). Hospice and Palliative Care
The Essential Guide (2nd ed.) CRC Press p. 202
Clark (2006). Mapping levels of palliative care development: a global view Help the Hospices; National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. p. 14. http://www.eolc-observatory.net/global/pdf/world_map.pdf. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
Milton J (2007). Medicine and Care of the Dying: A Modern History. Oxford University Press US. p. 20 Quadagno, J. (2011). Aging and the life course: An introduction to social gerontology (
5th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.