Eating, Drinking, and Comfort at End-of-Life: Promoting a Quality of Death

Abstract

Purpose Dysphagia is common in the last days of life (Bogaardt et al., 2015). Patients themselves, their families and caregivers, and health care professionals often struggle to deploy best practices in dysphagia management during this stage. Despite agreement that one's end-of-life should promote comfort, whether or not this is achieved can be unintentionally negatively impacted by the values of loved ones and health care workers, as well as health care workers' practice patterns. Importantly, we have yet to establish a comprehensive understanding of the patient experience at end-of-life to determine what truly entails “comfort” surrounding eating and drinking. Speech-language pathologists are increasingly consulted to address swallowing at end-of-life. It behooves the skilled clinician to have an understanding of the human condition in the final days to hours of life. Method In this piece, we explore the effects of food, drink, and the fasted state in both healthy adults and adults at end-of-life. We pose the thought-provoking question: Do food and drink contribute to a quality of death? Conclusion With this information, we work at the top of our license as providers who bring a unique, comprehensive understanding of such patients to the multidisciplinary comfort care team.