The end of life: unknown and unplanned?

Abstract

In an age when we can map the human genome and communicate globally across the Internet, it is amazing how little we know about the experience of people towards the end of life. For those who die, we do not know how many feel pain at the end of life their lives, how many receive effective symptom control, how many die in the place they want to be cared for, or what the quality of their care is. We do not know how many families feel supported during or after the illness, or to what extent this strains them and their finances. We also do not know what it costs to care for people towards the end of their lives, although there are global concerns about the inappropriate use of expensive technologies at the end of life.¹ These issues are only just beginning to be addressed in cancer and even here knowledge is still patchy.