A Midwife Through the Dying Process

“A Midwife through the Dying Process illustrates one physician’s vision of a better way to die, focusing on partnership, commitment, and joint decision-making. Timothy Quill, M.D., explores questions faced daily by patients, families, and their physicians in confronting terminal illness and the choice between aggressive medical therapy and hospice-oriented approaches that emphasize the quality of life.” “At the heart of this book are the compassionate accounts of the lives and deaths of nine very different patients cared for by Dr. Quill. Some fought death bitterly, while others found in their dying an opportunity for personal healing and fulfillment. Each patient made challenging decisions, circumscribed by medical conditions, but founded on their personal histories and values, as well as on their concepts of self, spirit, and community.” “Dr. Quill concludes each patient’s narrative with a discussion of the salient issues raised by the narrative for physicians, families, and society – such as hospice care, withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy, terminal sedation, and physician-assisted death. Examining the obligation of physicians to attend to patients’ deaths as much as to their lives, A Midwife through the Dying Process confronts with sensitivity and insight the contradictions inherent in medicine’s dual mandate to prolong life and relieve suffering.”