Swimming Upstream: Providing Palliative Care in a Culture of Cure

• In Event: 098 - Regular Session. ASA Opportunities in Retirement Network: Issues in Retirement

Abstract

While the US spends nearly a quarter of all Medicare dollars on patients in the last year of life, patients and their families continue to report substandard medical care, “characterized by untreated pain and other symptoms, unmet personal care needs, high caregiver burden and low patient and family satisfaction” (Meier 2004, 2008). Palliative care, a relatively new medical specialization in the US, aims to provide comfort, psychosocial support and pain management to Americans with life threatening illnesses (and unlike hospice, palliative care can be provided alongside curative care). Drawing on 43 interviews with dying patients and their families as well as interviews with 50 palliative care providers, I will discuss the growing movement to offer Americans a “better way of dying” via palliative care services and also discuss the barriers patients and providers continue to face as they pursue quality end of life care.

Author

• Clare L. Stacey, Kent State University