Mini-review: What Dying People Want.
My review: 
(4 stars)
I recently read What Dying People Want: Practical Wisdom for the End of Life, by David, M.D. Kuhl (2002) and wrote this mini-review for its Amazon page.
As pointed out in a previous review, this is not a book with the most up-to-date research and theory on grief, loss, and dying. But then, if it were, it would lose its primary audience, ordinary people. If you have done a lot of work in this area then you may not find much new, though I think the book is still a refreshing read. But it is a book I could recommend for many patients and family members, as well as some caregivers who may not have had much education and experience with grieving people. As a physician, I doubt that the book is too “basic” for most colleagues who are not in high-mortality specialties.
What prompted me to think about the book and recommend it was this question from one of our interns, posted on our discussion board:
“We have a number of patients who come in with a poor prognosis-some like PLCC [primary liver cell carcinoma], end stage cardiac failure, full blown AIDS, etc. They get into the wards and the relatives expect some sort of miracle and of course only God can grant one. In most cases , we end up loosing them and then I wonder should we have admitted them in the first place?”
Yes, as a Christian hospital, we have much to offer them, and this book (though not from a Christian viewpoint) helps us see how. At the same time, we need to be careful that we do not waste the family’s scarce resources (time and money) on futile measures. The most important measures, such as talking, may cost little.
We really need some research and some books like this one that are written from an African perspective. I do not think pastors or doctors have grappled with these issues as much here as they have in the West, even though the numbers of people dying are far, far higher.