title: Best care for the dying is listening to their needs.
abstract: With the heated debate over physician-assisted suicide and other end-of-life controversies, health care professionals may be overlooking a crucial element that helps them navigate, or even calm, these stormy waters: patient-focused care for those with life-threatening illnesses. With hospitals becoming true acute care centers, the issues of providing care to these patients will grow in importance. While the subject is uncomfortable, studies show health care has ignored the issue for too long. And some have argued that the assisted suicide debate is really a reaction to health care providers' inability to effectively deal with the issues that surround care for the patient who is dying. The following article provides you with some clues about where to start this effort in your facility by looking at a landmark study that shows what these patients and their families really want.
mesh_terms: D004496:Education, Continuing; D017144:Focus Groups; D015285:Hospital-Patient Relations; D006801:Humans; D008020:Life Support Care / Q000592:standards; D008611:Mentors; D017146:Models, Organizational; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States