Dying for Choice: A Nurses Role in a New Ars Moriendi to Achieve a Contemporary Good Death

Abstract

In writing The socio-political debate of dying today in the United Kingdom and New Zealand: ‘letting go’ of the biomedical model of care in order to develop a contemporary Ars Moriendi, the intent was to highlight that although the right to choice and the right to die debates are presently hot topics across many Western countries, they remain contained simultaneously within and constrained by medical and legal practices. The debate around choice and how we can move forward to achieve a contemporarily acceptable good death have, on a number of occasions, been proposed using the Ars Moriendi as a framework for change. Such approaches however, are most often offered through a medical lens, and can be seen in the works of Farr Curlin [2] and Atul Gawande [3,4]. Although these postulations are offered with good intent, and certainly bring the matter to the fore, they simultaneously hold on to the belief that a medical worldview alone is sufficient to meet the contemporary model of dying. While some of this literature is certainly helpful in highlighting the current discontent with death and dying for some individuals in Western societies, it does not eliminate the fact that little has changed for those seeking control over how they will die.