Losing The Public Understanding Of Dying: Retaining Old Wisdom As Medicine Advances

Abstract

Public understanding of the natural process of dying is becoming lost in communities where death in hospital has become the norm. Misinterpreting the physiological process of dying as symptoms of distress can further undermine witnesses’ understanding. Fears about dying remain unspoken, and contribute to patients or families requesting increasingly hopeless, expensive medical interventions that delay but do not prevent death. India might preserve public understanding of dying by education of clinicians, future clinicians in training, and of non-medical advisers who support people at the end of life, to be able to recognise and describe dying, and to provide information to patients and family questions about this natural process.