Dying at the end of your life

Excerpt

Despite our efforts to save the lives of our patients, we doctors should acknowledge that patients die at the end of their lives. Training of physicians is, in general, aimed at saving and prolonging the life of a patient, and relatively little attention is given to the inevitable process of dying. It also becomes more and more difficult to imagine a patient who dies at home. Today patients die at the hospital or in the ICU. When we discuss stopping or withholding treatment, it is a misunderstanding and failure of terminology. We should never stop treating our patients. However, we can decide at a given moment that a normally lifesaving treatment is no longer in the best interests of our patient. At that moment we change our therapy goal to optimal palliative care, which is still part of our therapeutic armamentarium. In general, continuation or institution of any treatment aiming at longer survival is, after such a change in therapy goal, not desirable. …