How Modern Medicine Can Help Patients Achieve a “Good” Death

June 4, 2014

(Oncology Nurse Advisor) – The overall quality of death of cancer patients who die in an urban Canadian setting with ready access to palliative care was found to be good to excellent in the large majority of cases, helping to dispel the myth that marked suffering at the end of life as inevitable. “Fear of dying is something almost every patient with advanced cancer or other life-threatening illness faces, and helping them, to achieve a ‘good death’ is an important goal of palliative care,” said Sarah Hales, MD, Coordinator of Psychiatry Services, Psychosocial Oncology & Palliative Care at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto.