Palliative Care Improvements Needed As Baby Boomers Age

Main Category: Palliative Care / Hospice Care
Also Included In: Primary Care / General Practice;  Caregivers / Homecare
Article Date: 07 Dec 2006 - 14:00 PDT

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A baby "boomer-driven movement" could prompt needed improvements in palliative care for U.S. residents and "reclaim death from high-tech machines in intensive care units," according to experts, the Baltimore Sun reports. According to experts, as baby boomers "confront the tough clinical realities of dying through their own parents' experiences, they will insist that the final stage of life becomes as personal and family based as the first," the Sun reports. Marian Grant, coordinator of palliative care at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center geriatrics department, said, "There are not a whole lot of choices in the hospital at the moment for people who are dying. You have to know enough to be able to say 'I need to see someone about pain management. My mother isn't comfortable and what are you going to do about that?'" Ira Byock, chair of palliative medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, said that improvements in palliative care are needed to prevent a "true public health crisis" as baby boomers age. "Although most people would prefer to die at home, only 20% do," Byock said, adding, "About 60% die in hospitals, about 20% die in nursing homes. ... If we don't make major changes in the way we plan for the last chapter of life, the baby boom generation is going to stress our health systems in ways they have never been challenged before" (Smith, Baltimore Sun, 12/3).

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