Religious Understandings of a Good Death in Hospice Palliative Care

Explores how religious understandings of death are experienced in hospice care.In the 1960s, English physician and committed Christian Cicely Saunders introduced a new way of treating the terminally ill that she called hospice care. Emphasizing a holistic and compassionate approach, her model led to the rapid growth of a worldwide hospice movement. Aspects of the early hospice model that stressed attention to the religious dimensions of death and dying, while still recognized and practiced, have developed outside the purview of academic inquiry and consideration. Meanwhile, global migration and multicultural diversification in the West have dramatically altered the profile of contemporary hospice care. In response to these developments, this volume is the first to critically explore how religious understandings of death are manifested and experienced in palliative care settings.>Harold Coward is Professor Emeritus of History and Founding Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Perfectibility of Human Nature in Eastern and Western Thought, also published by SUNY Press. Kelli I. Stajduhar is Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Centre on Aging at the University of Victoria.