16 May 2011
Keech Hospice Care is calling for more people to talk among their friends and family about dying and bereavement.
The call from the hospice is part of the second ever annual Dying Matters Awareness Week (16-22 May 2011), which has been organised by the Dying Matters Coalition to encourage people across the UK to talk openly about dying, death and bereavement.
Adult Services Manager at the hospice, Elaine Tolliday said: “Unfortunately the subjects of death, dying and bereavement are too often treated as a taboo, the result of which can mean people don’t know what to expect or how to handle such situations when they are faced with it themselves. At the hospice we know that everyone will cope with their own situation in different ways but we feel it is important to encourage people to break the taboo and see that talking in advance about their own death can be beneficial in ensuring their personal wishes are fulfilled.”
Following the death of a close friend some years ago, Judy joined the hospices ‘Silver Lining’ group which supports the recently bereaved.
Judy, who is 72 years old and lives in Houghton Regis, has recently suffered another bereavement of a good friend and echoes the idea that talking about things openly can be a big help: “The support at the hospice through the Silver Lining group was very good. We were a group of people who were all in the same situation…all shocked and stunned by the fact that someone close to us had died and not really knowing how to handle it.
“But it really helped us to talk about our feelings and to understand the different things we were all going through in our bereavement. What I’ve found over the years since is that, when a friend or relative of mine experiences the death of someone close to them, because I’ve talked these things through before, that has now helped me to help them.”
Keech Hospice Care is one of 14,000 members of the national Dying Matters Coalition, with an interest in supporting changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards dying, death and bereavement.
Set up by the National Council for Palliative Care (NCPC) the Dying Matters Coalition aims to encourage people to talk about their own end of life issues with friends, family and loved ones in order to make ‘a good death’ possible for the 500,000 people who die in England each year.
Research for Dying Matters has previously found that many people have specific wishes about their end of life care or what they would like to happen to them after their death, but that a reluctance to discuss these issues makes it much less likely that these will be met. There is a major mismatch between people’s preferences for where they would like to die and their actual place of death – 70% of people would prefer to die at home but more than 60% currently die in hospital.
Hilary Fisher, Director of the Dying Matters Coalition said: “This is an important part of helping to raise awareness about the need to openly discuss dying and death. Every minute someone in England dies, but many people still feel uncomfortable talking about end of life issues. Everyone deserves a good death, and this is more likely to be achieved if we discuss it early on. Talking about dying and death is in everyone’s interests as it can help ensure that all of us can get the care we want, where we want it at the end of our lives.”
