San Antonio College Library

The American hospice movement has done much to bring aid and comfort to the dying and their families. Nonintrusive, humane care for persons with AIDS, a special environment for children with terminal cancer, pain management, the option of letting death occur at home rather than in a hospital, the very acknowledgment and acceptance of death as a natural event in contemporary American culture - all have been made possible in small or large part by the...

"For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are...

A frank portrayal of the medical care of dying people past and present, The Inevitable Hour helps to explain why a movement to restore dignity to the dying arose in the early 1970s and why its goals have been so difficult to achieve. -- Book Jacket.

The Good Death is the first full-scale examination of one of today's most complex issues: the profound change in the way Americans think about and confront death. Drawing on more than six years of firsthand research and reporting, noted journalist Marilyn Webb builds her account around intimate portraits of the dying themselves. She explains why some deaths become shockingly difficult--and needlessly painful--and how the struggles over end-of-life...