Dignity of care who do we change the paradigm or modern medicine from extend life to improving quality of living

I recently finished Dr. Atul Gawande`s book, Being Mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end I highly recommend for anyone who works with or in the health sectors.

My challenge for our modern health ecosystem how do we transform the current status quo? Going from prolonging life at all cost to improving the quality of life remaining

All stakeholder needs to think about how can we improve the dignity of care not simply on the best evidence practice especially for those who are at the end. Understand what patients wants and adapting treatment to meet those needs.

All stakeholders need to be engaged and challenged and here are my challenges for each of these groups:

• For Families: How can you help your loved one advocate for the care he or she wants so he or she has best quality of life remaining?
• Students studying to be health providers: What are the skills you need to acquire to be compassionate care providers? This is not
• Current Health Providers: Have you given your patients the opportunity to openly discuss what their expectations are and do you understand what they want in their care? Have you considered these factors in development of their treatment plan?
• Tech companies: What innovations can you focus on creating do improve the care of those who are needing palliative care.

I am keen to see how Dr Gawande will take his outline in new insurance company he will be running on behalf of Amazon, Berkshire and JP Morgan.

Delivery compassionate care with dignity is not well addressed issue and I have seen different professionals touch on this issue. To ensure we can provide compassionate care someone needs to pay for it. This will eventually drill down how should health care be financed. I am Canadian and now I live in Spain, and I really cannot see better alternative to universal single payer system ( I will get into health care financing in separate post). For opponents against signal payer system they can spin some of the cases Dr. Gawande presented in his book on rationing of care. This is not politics it is neither right or left; this is about human dignity and allow people who are at end of their life provide important voice in what they want in their care. If the systems does not provide good home care support or palliative care or long term care options then that is failure in the system and these are structural changes that need to consider when planning for health and social care services.