The default pathway for dying in America—kept alive by technology as
long as possible—does not seem congruent either with living well or
dying faithfully. But what to do? The institutions of hospice and
palliative medicine provide a helpful alternative. By mitigating
distressing symptoms, maintaining function, locating dying in the home
and community, and providing both realistic information and reassuring
presence, hospice and palliative medicine can create conditions patients
(and the members of their community) need to practice what in the
middle ages was called “the art of dying” (ars moriendi). Yet, it is
easy to mistake the death that hospice and palliative medicine can
provide—a death with minimal suffering and maximal patient control—for a
“good death." This mistake sometimes leads hospice and palliative
medicine to undervalue the consciousness and relational presence that
make it possible for patients to participate in the tasks of dying well.
In this talk, Dr. Curlin, a palliative medicine physician and clinical
ethicist, will consider how the practices of palliation can serve as
modest but powerful tools to help patients, as well as clergy, family,
and friends, recover the practices of living well, and faithfully, in
the face of death.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:
1.
Describe the difference between a good death and dying well, as well as
how palliative medicine relates to the possibility of each.
2.
Describe the aims and goals of palliative care, as describe by prominent
national and international organizations, and contrast those with the
aim and goal of health.
3. Explain differences in palliative
practices that might follow from having the goal of palliative medicine
be health, vs. the goal of palliative medicine being minimal suffering
and maximal quality of life.
4. Describe two or three ways that
hospice and palliative medicine can help patients, as well as clergy,
family, and friends, recover the practices of living well, and
faithfully, in the face of death.