Index to Volume CX:
In brief THE Hospice Alternative: a new Context for Death and Dying, by Anne Munley. Basic Books, $17.50, 349 pp. If you or someone you love in the United States might be struck with a terminal...
...Sister Munley concludes that "the hospice must become an institutional component of the national health-care system...
...The book includes several helpful appendices (one on how to find hospice care) and a rich bibliography on all aspects of death and dying...
...On the latter, she notes the promising beachhead established by recent congressional legislation to initiate some funding of hospice care...
...The goal is "to provide symptom control through appropriate palliative therapies," as well as to promote the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual welfare of patients and their families...
...Through a series of moving interviews with patients, families, and care-givers, Sister Munley conveys the essence and tenor of hospice care...
...Written by Sister Anne Munley, a trained sociologist gifted with range, common sense, and compassion, it studies the remarkable rise of the hospice movement in a medically hostile environment...
...She handles all important issues with dexterity: the problem of the spiritual dimension in care for the dying, the contrast of hospice to hospital, the resistance of the health-care system to the hospice concept, and the economic precariousness of the hospice movement...
...Services are provided by medically supervised interdisciplinary teams of professionals and volunteers...
...According to the National Hospice Organization, in 1982 there were over eight hundred hospice programs in the United States...
...Private insurance groups, reluctant to include hospice services in their present coverage, are watching to see the economic benefits of the government experiment...
...A dying patient nails down the problem: "Hospice cares for the patient for the patient's good...
...She depicts the hospice movement as an active reform-agent in the American medical system, but warns of the bureaucratic dangers the movement will face if integrated into the matrix system...
...PATRICK JORDAN...
...If you or someone you love in the United States might be struck with a terminal disease in the next twenty years, this book deserves your attention...
...A generous offering...
...The hospital cares for the patient for the hospital's good.'') Hospice is an umbrella term for those groups and institutions offering service and support to the dying and their families...
Vol. 110 • December 1983 • No. 22
