• Online Features  This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (14)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • End-of-life Care/ Palliative Medicine  • Psychosocial Issues  • Quality of Care  • Quality of Care, Other  • Quality of Life  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Sarah Hales, MD; Camilla Zimmermann, MD, MSc; Gary Rodin, MD

Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(9):912-918.

During the past decade, research has examined definitions and conceptualizations of quality of dying and death in different populations. At the same time, there has been a call to clarify the distinctions between quality of dying and death and other end-of-life constructs. The purposes of this article are to (1) review research that examined definitions and conceptualizations of the quality of dying and death, (2) clarify the quality of dying and death construct and its distinction from quality of life and quality of care at the end of life, and (3) outline challenges that remain for health care professionals, researchers, and policy makers. Review of the literature revealed that the quality of dying and death construct is multidimensional, with 7 broad domains: physical experience, psychological experience, social experience, spiritual or existential experience, the nature of health care, life closure and death preparation, and the circumstances of death. The quality of dying and death is subjectively determined with numerous factors that influence its judgment, including culture, type and stage of disease, and social and professional role in the dying experience. Quality of dying and death is broader in scope than either quality of life at the end of life or quality of care at the end of life, although there is overlap among these constructs.

Author Affiliations: Department of Psychosocial Oncology & Palliative Care, Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

CiteULike    Connotea    Delicious    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

In This Issue of Archives of Internal Medicine
Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(9):908.
FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

The Dilemma of Goodness: Acknowledging Beneficence Tension in the Search for Consensus
Clark
J Am Board Fam Med 2010;23:674-676.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Review: The quality of dying and death: a systematic review of measures
Hales et al.
Palliat Med 2010;24:127-144.
ABSTRACT  

Phase II Study of an Outpatient Palliative Care Intervention in Patients With Metastatic Cancer
Follwell et al.
JCO 2009;27:206-213.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT