Dying for Care: Hospice Care or Euthanasia

John Jacono is an assistant professor of nursing at Laurentian
University.

This book’s stated goal is to increase awareness of the rights and
treatment choices available to the terminally ill and those who
accompany them on their journey.

In fact, Dying for Care achieves much more. An informative section
discusses the merits of different strategies currently used in caring
for the dying. Palliative-care programs, which involve a philosophy of
inclusion and caring for the dying patient, the significant others, and
the caregivers, are shown to be woefully inadequate to meet the needs of
Canadians—a curious state of affairs given that statistics underscore
the financial merit of returning to almost-forgotten caring techniques.

More important, this book argues for and promotes the rights of the
dying and their significant others to financial, material, spiritual,
and therapeutic support as envisioned by the protagonists, not by the
professionals who serve them. Provision of this support, the author
argues, would almost certainly obviate the need for considering
euthanasia as a strategy for ending distress.

There is much in this valuable resource book to inspire us to translate
into reality the hope that palliative care will be available to all
Canadians in the coming century.