Managing death in a hospital context: creative approaches to teaching and learning about death and dying

This chapter examines methods of helping practitioners to manage death in a positive way, in a hospital setting. It focuses on a number of creative teaching and learning strategies designed to help healthcare professionals to manage death and to support patients and families at the end of life. Deaths such as this often involve healthcare professionals experiencing stress because of their lack of control over the circumstances. The chapter describes ways to improve communication with patients and families and to enable a good death to become a reality for patients and their families. It outlines why people find death and dying difficult and explains educational approaches for overcoming the fears, as well as developing greater self-awareness about a range of end-of-life issues and describes death as a process and how to promote good death experiences. Good deaths are often characterised by families having control and a lack of patient distress.