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Comment
. 2017 Jul 10;15(1):126.
doi: 10.1186/s12916-017-0897-2.

Rapidly increasing end-of-life care needs: a timely warning

Geoffrey Mitchell  1
Affiliations
Comment

Rapidly increasing end-of-life care needs: a timely warning

Geoffrey Mitchell. BMC Med. .

Abstract

Current trends in population ageing show that, in the near future, while more people will live longer, more will also die at any one time. Health systems, as well as individual practitioners, are only just becoming aware of the extent of this problem. Health systems will have to rapidly change practice to manage the number of people dying in the coming years, many with complex multimorbid conditions. The changes involved should include a personal recognition by all health professionals of their role in caring for the dying, and healthcare education must include end-of-life care management as part of the core curriculum. Further, health systems must improve integration between primary care and specialist clinicians to ensure the burden is shared efficiently across the system. Finally, it should be recognised that end-of-life care is not terminal care, but should be anticipated months or sometimes years ahead through advance care planning for known future complications by the patient's clinical team, as well as by patients and their main carers, to manage crises as they ariserather than react to them once they arise.Please see related article: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/ 10.1186/s12916-017-0860-2 .

Keywords: End-of-life care; Healthcare integration; Healthcare planning; Primary care.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author information

GM is Professor of General Practice and Palliative Care, and has extensive research interests in primary palliative care and generalist-specialist integration.

Competing interests

The author declares that he/she has no competing interests.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Comment on

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