Attitudes towards death and end-of-life care

Abstract

End-of-life care represents a unique segment of palliative care. In the end-of-life period, the task of the involved healthcare professionals is to accompany patients during their last days, weeks or months of life to the moment of their death. The way people die has changed profoundly over the past 70 years. Health care is now the main context in which many people encounter death. The focus is on clinical interventions in the end-of-life period with the aim of defeating death, while a broader context and the significance of dying is neglected. Progressive medicalization of dying has inevitably led to changing attitudes towards death and dying in both general population and healthcare professionals. There is a struggle among healthcare professionals and individuals as well to accept the inevitability of death. There has been a growing interest in examining attitudes towards death and dying, in order to achieve a greater acceptance of death with repercussions on adequate planning and implementation of end-of-life care. A thorough understanding and estimation of attitudes to death and dying, both among general population and among health professionals, is required for the development of an effective strategy to promote end-of-life care. Due to the upcoming examination of attitudes to death and dying in Serbia, as well as exploring their influence on attitudes to end-of-life care, this paper presents the current knowledge in this area.