Experts warn of increasing overmedicalisation of death

Health and social systems around the world are failing to give appropriate, compassionate care to people who are dying and their families, reports a new Lancet Commission led by a UCL researcher. The authors write that today's current overemphasis on aggressive treatments to prolong life, vast global inequities in palliative care access, and high end-of-life medical costs have led millions of people to suffer unnecessarily at the end of life. The Commission calls for public attitudes to death and dying to be rebalanced, away from a narrow, medicalised approach towards a compassionate community model, where communities and families work with health and social care services to care for people dying. Bringing together experts in health and social care, social science, economics, philosophy, political science, theology, community work, as well as patient and community activists, the Commission has analysed how societies around the world perceive death and care for people dying, providing recommendations to policy makers, governments, civil society, and health and social care systems. Commission co-Chair Dr Libby Sallnow, palliative medicine consultant and honorary senior clinical lecturer at St Christopher's Hospice and Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL Psychiatry, said: "The COVID-19 pandemic has seen many people die the ultimate medicalised death, often alone but for masked staff in hospitals and intensive care units, unable to communicate with their families, except digitally "How people die has changed dramatically over the past 60 years, from a family event with occasional medical support, to a medical event with limited family support.