Author: Dirk Houttekier
Date: 24-05-2011
Promotor: Prof. dr. Luc Deliens
Co-Promotor: Prof. dr. Joachim Cohen
SUMMARY OF THE DISSERTATION
Place of death statistics became a symbol of the social movements for palliative care and dignified dying that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in the UK and the USA, criticizing the medicalization of terminal illness and death and the inhumane curative care approach at the end of many people’s lives. These movements strived for a palliative and humane approach of end-of-life care, relieving suffering and respecting the choices and increasing autonomy of the dying, to guarantee a death in dignity. In this dissertation place of death is looked at as a way of considering the quality of end-of-life care and the circumstances of death and dying crossnationally in specific disease groups such as cancer and dementia-related diseases, in metropolitan populations as compared to non metropolitan populations, and to evaluate health care policies with respect to palliative care services and care for the elderly. Place of death and circumstances of dying. Studies in a metropolitan, national and international context was written as a PhD dissertation.
