Care for patients at the end of life has long troubled American medicine, not only in its failure to provide good palliative care, but also in the relationship between doctors and patients. Many efforts to remedy this situation have emerged: a growing and strengthening palliative care movement, better understanding of the situation of patients at the end of life, a sharper focus on the values and behavior of physicians in their care of the dying, and a more general effort to gain medical recognition that end-of-life care is just as important as care during all other phases of life.
