What is a Good Death? Health Care Professionals’ Narrations on End-of-Life Care

Abstract

The present study explores how health professionals evaluate care at the end of life and what they consider to be a good death. We conducted four focus groups with 37 health professionals and used a grounded theory-based approach to analyze the transcripts of the discussions. A lack of organization, training, formalized procedures, and communication with dying persons and their families emerged. Difficulty in defining a good death derived from the ethical dilemmas that involved places to die, palliative care, and end-of-life decision making.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Camillo Barbisan, Regional Transplant Center, Dr. Marco Bonetti, Quality and Risk Management Unit, Hospital of Camposampiero, Drs. Alessandra Feltrin, Regional Transplant Center, Prof. Erminio Gius, University of Padova, Prof. Mauro Niero, University of Verona, and the whole Regional Bioethics Committee of Veneto Region (Italy) for making this research possible and supporting it.