ABSTRACT
Who among us is satisfied with the level of care provided to the terminally ill person in the United States? It cannot be very many, judging from what this writer has had the opportunity to see and hear. We seem to be engaged in an endless round of persuading each other that the prevailing level of terminal care ranges from the inadequate to the intolerable. Often the clinical or research report documents what the patient has already learned from personal experience: that the dying person is isolated physically (Markson, 1970) and emotionally (Kübler-Ross, 1969), subject to a biased communication network (Glaser & Strauss, 1965) in a social context that gives low priority to the individual’s personality and inner experiences (Weisman and Kastenbaum, 1968), and in a physical environment that may be deficient or even hazardous (Reynolds and Kalish, 1974). It would be easy to extend the list of critical reports, difficult to compile a counterbalancing set of findings that “all is well.”
