Uncertain trajectories in old age and implications for families and for palliative and end of life care policy and practice

Abstract

The provision of high-quality end-of-life care for all is high on national (and international) agendas, but areas of unmet needs identified includes elderly people. This article draws on an autoethnographic account of the dying and death of my father to identify and interrogate disjunctions between end-of-life care policy and commonplace experiences of elderly people who die in a hospital setting. There are significant disjunctions between the “blunt” tools of end-of-life care policy and the everyday experiences of the dying and death of an elderly patient and an urgent need to improve end-of-life care for our oldest generations.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my family members, friends, colleagues and reviewers who have contributed to the various drafts of this article. In memory of my father, Leonard Douglas (Doug) Almack 28-02-22 to 11-09-11.