The Dying Role: Its Relevance to Improved Patient Care.

SOCIETY is failing to meet the obligation it has to its dying members. Persons with terminal illnesses suffer isolation and neglect in hospitals, receive overzealous treatment by physicians, and are kept in ignorance of their situation by families and medical personnel. Evidence for these statements has come from observers of the medical care system and from dying patients themselves (Kübler-Ross, 1969; Reynolds and Kalish, 1974; Sudnow, 1967).