The Dying Process: Patients' Experiences of Palliative Care / Edition 1

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death. Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying. A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.