The for-profit hospice industry has grown, allowing more Americans to die at home. But few family members realize that "hospice care" still means they'll do most of the physical and emotional work.
Two new reports from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have found widespread problems in hospice care and say the government needs to open its scorecards on hospice care to the public.
Research has found that university curriculum often goes light on one of life's universal experiences — dying. So some colleges have gone to new lengths to make the training more meaningful.
In New Orleans, the lifelike representations have become a part of the city's tradition of social grieving and are a source of healing, especially in communities that have suffered from gun violence.
A Maine medical school and nearby hospice center are trying out a VR program aimed at fostering more empathy for dying patients among health workers-in-training. Not everyone is sold on the idea.
A gravely ill man arrives at the hospital, alone and unconscious, with a tattoo across his chest: "Do Not Resuscitate." It sparks deep conversation about end-of-life care in America.
Technology is fundamentally changing how we deal with death, memorials and human remains. One of the latest examples: A startup offers a smartphone-connected urn where ashes are used to grow a tree.
In Modern Death, Dr. Haider Warraich says a slow dying process, during which patients move in and out of hospitals or nursing homes, is a "very recent development in our history as a species."
Dying in America doesn't always go the way we plan. One terminally ill man's hope to be disconnected from his respirator and donate his organs was almost thwarted, despite his best laid plans.
Colorado is the latest state to consider legalizing aid in dying. Residents find themselves struggling with whether assisted death is an act of mercy or a moral slippery slope.
Southwest Medical Associates Hospice forged its mission during the AIDS crisis. The crisis is over, but the mission lives on — with hospice house calls that bring comfort to the dying.
Now that California has legalized aid in dying, doctors there need to know what to say to patients. They're getting help from doctors in Oregon, who have been answering these questions for decades.
A lot of things can affect whether a person can die at home as wished rather than in a hospital. One is whether a relative is able to take more than a few days off work to care for them.
People with uncertain prognoses or dementia can't end their lives under California's new medical aid in dying law. Proponents say those limits reflect the uncertainties of death, and of politics.
After months of impassioned debate over the ethics of physician-assisted suicide, California will become the fifth state to allow people who are terminally ill to hasten death with lethal drugs.
America is generally what Dr. Therese Rando, in her book, Grief, Death and Dying, terms a “death denying” society (as opposed to “death accepting” or “death-defying” societies).
Proponents of a bill that would let doctors give dying people lethal prescriptions ran into opposition from Latino Democrats. Backers say they're not through trying for approval.
Artist Jennifer Rodgers' father was hospitalized for seven months with sepsis before he died. She used the creative process to try to comprehend his suffering and her loss.
