Principles of Palliative Care

Module 1: Principles of Palliative Care

Activity 1

Health Care in the Modern Western Society

The modern western society has been subjected to continuous advancements in term of technology and development. At present, the survival rate for the people has increased due to these underlying factors. However, upon research, I found that the commentators hold varying school of thoughts regarding the idea of increased life expectancy, to be an outcome of improvements and advancement of the modern western society and the health care system.

In modern western societies, the progression of the technology has shifted the cause of death from acute to chronic diseases that ensure longer life of a person. In this era, the development in the life expectancy is the resultant of various factors. Some of these factors are as following

Better hygienic conditions

Improved medical services

Availability of highly acknowledged and proficient medical practitioners

Implementation of medical technology in making an effort to prolong the life of a patient

Increased hospitalization and inpatient and outpatient care

Proper disposal of the bodies with the help of funeral industries

The world health organization states that there has been a massive increase in the life expectancy since 1990 (World Health Organization, 2013). There have been a number of researches that have been conducted to find out the reason behind this improvement. Although most of the researchers agree with the point that modern western society is a “death denying” society, however, several researches think in opposite.

The association of the term “death denying” with the modern society gave birth to the “death denial thesis” back in 1955 and 1985. There are many studies that support this thesis while others simply reject the idea. As Camilla Rodin and Zimmermann states in their research article, there is an increased demand of shifting the 'death denial' towards 'death acceptance' and promoting the naturalness of the process. The medicalized approach has promoted the concept of segregation of dying persons, which leads to significant psychological and social effects on the patient and his family. The researchers also argue on the materialization and advancement of the technology to be involved in prolongs the life span and avoiding death. Eckersley, in his study states that the materialization in the death avoiding process has led to the generation of many psychological and social impacts that affects the cultural and mental well-being of the person. With the modernized technology, the utilization of mechanical devices to keep the patient alive has become general. This includes the usage of ventilators as the top priority. Many researchers argue on the utilization of such machinery, opposing the artificial life support system, stating that it has been leading to various ethical and legal issues (Vincent, 1999).

Death denying is the problem that remains evident in the society. The encountering of the modern individual with death is rare, leading to increased death denying and lack of ability to cope with mortality (Seale, 2010). Being a modern society, we have succeeded in avoiding death through many advanced procedures. This is the reason that patients ...