It's been more than 15 years since the Institute of Medicine released its seminal 1997 report detailing the suffering that many Americans experience at the end of life and offering sweeping recommendations on how to improve care.
But the number of people experiencing pain in the last year of life actually increased by nearly 12 percent between 1998 and 2010, according to a study published Monday. And the number of people with depression in the last year of life increased by more than 26 percent.
All that happened as guidelines and quality measures for end-of-life care were developed, the number of palliative care programs rose and hospice use doubled between 2000 and 2009.
"We've put a lot of work into this and it's not yielding what we thought it should be yielding. So what do we do now?" asked Dr. Joanne Lynn, a study author who directs the Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness at the Altarum Institute.
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4 comments:
Read the book "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. It's an excellent book about aging, assisted living, nursing homes, cancer treatments, etc. It's kind of depressing, but very enlightening at the same time.
The Greatest Generation would just keep their pain to themselves, the older baby boomers whine about every boo-boo. The pain isn't worse; people aren't as resilient.
The generations are dumbed down and conformed. Our country was lost fifty years ago.
2:39 The Greatest Generation kept a LOT quiet...like rape....child abuse....abortion... spousal abuse. That generation was crippled by the code of silence that took years of legislation to change. Not to mention holding women back 100 years or better. Compassion in this generation will address these issue and find a way. At least they have a voice.
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