. "2 A Profile of Death and Dying in America." Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1997.
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to bear every possible resource to prolong active and healthy life" and of accepting death only when "it is felt to be inevitable" and, then, trying "to mitigate its connections with suffering" (Parsons, 1963, p. 61).
The next chapter considers dimensions of caring at the end of life and ways of mitigating suffering. Each dimension involves patients, families, and clinicians in decisions that are often painful to make and difficult to implement. The nature and range of these decisions reflect the consequences of a century's worth of changes that have altered when, why, where, and how people die and intensified the need for better support for dying patients and those close to them.
