End of Life: Reflections on a Good Death

Bioethics Forum Vol. 13 (1) Spring 1997

What Makes a Good Death?
by Shana Alexander

My Ideal Death
by Nancy Pickard

Good Death: Improving Care Inch by Inch
A good death can be and mean many things.

STILL / HERE Above Ground
Bill Bartholome ponders having been marked by Death, yet remaining alive three years later.

What Makes a Good Death?
Daniel Callahan explores the complex question of defining a good death.

The Case of John: Refusal to Eat in a Long-Term Care Facility
Does a refusal to eat mean the patient is “starving himself to death” or is the patient “ready to go to God”?

The Spice Box
Myra Christopher poignantly reflects on the impact of her mother’s death and the role she and her family played in her dying process.

A Good Death
Alice Kitchen argues that dying alone, without comfort and forgotten in a sterile hospital room is the opposite of a good death.

Struggle
Patrick Miller posits that providing quality care of seriously ill and dying patients presents personal challenges to healthcare professionals, summoning them to exercise moral sensitivity, empathy, and compassion.

An African American Looks at Death
Marian Gray Secundy suggests that in a real sense, there is something inappropriate about asking black folk to talk about a “good” death when they continue to be confronted with comprehensive, basis problems rooted in the history of slavery, the Jim Crow era, and other realities of racism.