Understanding dying as a focal point for defining an integrative approach to health and social care

Abstract

Long standing and poorly acknowledged tensions underpin what is considered success or failure in the field of health and social care. Such tensions threaten to undermine and limit much needed progress. In this article, I discuss the role of death and the dying process as a foundation upon which we might begin to address these tensions. I argue that through careful acknowledgement and attention to the stillness and silence of death we might better understand the impact the dying process has on the healthcare discourses that surround and orientate themselves to it. Training our eye to the rhythm of the human life course necessitates a greater appreciation of death and its influence in shaping a meaningful response to questions relating to care and the attention to human suffering. With this comes a move beyond a singular focus on the body as life's container, embracing human connections that transcend the physical and social worlds. Here our dependency and vulnerability are as much as what makes as human as our autonomy and rationality. Such an appreciation allows us to move away from values entrenched within notions of success and failure and towards a more integrative approach to health and social care.

Keywords

• Death
• Palliative care
• Public health
• Social capital
• Social determinants of health
• Global health