Publication year: 2011
Source: Social Science & Medicine, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 1 September 2011
Cara, Bailey , Roger, Murphy , Davina, Porock
In an ageing society, like the UK, where long-term illness dominates healthcare, there has been a change in the way that the end-of-life is approached and experienced. Advancing technology, inadequate knowledge and inconsistency in palliative care services have complicated the ability to recognise imminent dying and many people access emergency services at the end-of-life. Drawing on ethnographic research exploring end-of-life care in one large Emergency Department (ED), the authors examine the spaces of dying and death, which are created in a place designed to save life, and not necessarily to provide supportive and palliative care. Despite the high need for…
Highlights: ► The space in which dying patients are cared for affects the level of attention they receive in the emergency department. ► In the ED designed to save life staff attempt to hide the end-of-life through the segregation of the dying and bereaved. ► Dying patients and bereaved relatives frequently experience poor care due to their segregation in the ED. ► Death is perceived as ‘out of place’ in the ED and taints the setting that is more positively associated with saving life. ► The nurse is ideally placed to challenge existing practices to improve the quality of end-of-life care in the ED.