To Philosophise about Dying

Talking to patients about death and dying.

INTRODUCTION Talking about death and dying, either with patients terminally ill or well, presents challenges for the general practitioner. There are few Australian educational resources and little Australian research into this area. METHODS We undertook two focus groups, an interview process, and a final consultation with palliative care experts and GPs. RESULTS General practitioners felt t...

Talking with patients about dying.

n engl j med 367;17 nejm.org october 25, 2012 1651 in this study. Indeed, only 66 patients with mutated-PIK3CA tumors used aspirin after a diagnosis of colorectal cancer and only 3 of them died of colorectal cancer during the follow-up period. Assuming these findings are confirmed in large prospective studies, one may predict that the PIK3CA mutation status of colorectal tumors will become a us...

Educating medical students about death and dying.

Doctors in every branch of medicine must from time to time deal with patients who are dying or who have life threatening illnesses. Many young doctors avoid facing their own feelings about death, finding them stressful.1 When patients die we are perhaps reminded of the certainty of our own deaths. In 1915 Freud2 wrote: 'Our own death is indeed unimaginable ... at bottom no-one believes in his o...

Dying matters: let's talk about it.

Talking with children about death and dying.

This paper outlines the development of childrens' understanding about the concept of death, and describes common grief reactions. Using this framework, the principle elements of talking with children on such a sensitive topic are discussed. A variety of potential clinical interventions at individual, family and group levels are proposed.