Acknowledgements
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Ariès, P. (1976) Western Attitudes Towards Death, Marion Boyars, London.Cartwright, A., Hockey, L. and Anderson, J. (1973) Life before Death, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Dinnage, R. (1990) The...
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1.4.13 Defining a ‘good death’
The Good Death?Activity 8Read ‘The good death?’ by Mary Bradbury. She suggests three representations of ‘a good death’. Try to categorise the case study deaths above using her criteria of a...
View Article1.4.12 Bad deaths
What about the other end of the spectrum? What constitutes a bad death? Is there less contention about what constitutes a bad death? Extreme pain and discomfort, humiliating dependence and being a...
View ArticleA good death?
How would you classify these four deaths? The following comments are from the course testers and authors.Vic's death was lonely and probably difficult, in that his breathing was laboured as a result of...
View Article1.4.10 Unfinished business
When people die suddenly we can never be sure that they have done and said what they want and are able to do. Meg’s long term-illness gave her a lot of time for reflection and preparation, so that...
View Article1.4.9 Professional help
Vic’s last few weeks were spent in a state of increasing distrust of the ward staff, since there was never any attempt to open a dialogue from either side. The staff appeared to misinterpret Vic’s...
View Article1.4.8 Comment on case studies
Vic was not consulted about his needs and the possibility of his death was never discussed. The uncertainty about his religious needs resulted in a staff member having to make a decision on his behalf...
View Article1.4.7 Case study 4: The death of Meg – a home death
Meg was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 28, shortly after the birth of her second child, a diagnosis which was changed to systemic lupus erythematosis (usually called SLE or lupus),...
View Article1.4.6 Case study 3: Andrew’s death – a hospice death
Andrew was a 23 year-old car mechanic who had been suffering from indigestion for some months before the GP referred him to a hospital consultant, who after a series of tests diagnosed cancer of the...
View Article1.4.5 Case study 2: Li’s death – a residential home death
Li was a resident in a home where she had lived for the previous five years. She had led an exciting and unusual life, travelling from China at the age of 30 and living in England for the remainder of...
View Article1.4.4 Case study 1: Vic Harris – a hospital death
Vic was a 68-year-old man with a long history of chronic (pulmonary) obstructive airways disease and was therefore a regular in-patient at the medical ward of the local hospital where he received...
View Article1.4.3 Assessing the quality of dying
Read the following case studies. They are accounts of deaths which take place in different settings. They have been chosen as examples of different deaths and point up some of the complexities which...
View Article1.4.2 Concepts of a good death
The concept of a ‘good death’ is highly contentious. Definitions vary according to different historical and cultural contexts. At certain points in history there has existed formal teaching about the...
View Article1.4.1 Choices in dying
An enormous diversity exists in the way people view and approach death and dying. This diversity continues to be evident when people are faced with the knowledge that their own death is approaching....
View ArticleA psychological explanation for near-death experiences
Some people put forward a psychological explanation of the near-death experience which goes something like this: the personality (or ego) is attempting to deny its imminent dissolution and so evokes...
View Article1.3.11 The significance of the near-death experience
The sociologist Allan Kellehear (1995) observes that most studies have had a medical focus, investigating whether near-death experiences could be the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain or another...
View Article1.3.10 The impact of near-death experiences
In many studies (Sabom, 1982; Toates 1999) the main effect of a near-death experience was to reduce a person’s fear of dying. Individuals surviving similar types of near-death crisis without an...
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1.3.9 Other common features
In addition to these very common features there are in many accounts further distinctive elements. A sense of entering into or being met by light and/or an area of great beauty has been expressed in a...
View Article1.3.8 Separation from the physical body
Very common is the experience of floating, sometimes on the ceiling, looking down on the body – a sense that the essential part of the person has separated from the physical body. In Michael Sabom’s...
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