The Crisis of US Hospice Care

"The Crisis of US Hospice Care is an honest look at the current problems with hospice care in the United States... [Braswell] has opened a door into the real challenges we face in achieving a society. For as Mahatma Gandhi cautioned us, a society's true measure can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."

"A highly original book with the potential to influence various aspects of end-of-life scholarship and discourse. Braswell plants seeds for a new vision of the US family structure, social life, policy, and governance that would ease the burden on dying persons and their loved ones. Excellently written and approachable."

"Lucid and engaging. Combining stories with analysis, Braswell draws readers in, helping them see the human significance of the question at stake. A constructive appraisal of hospice's genealogy that highlights its vulnerabilities and celebrates its strengths, this beautifully written, intellectually challenging book will be of interest to a wide array of people."

"In this extremely ambitious book, Harold Braswell, an important scholar in bioethics, leverages unique expertise and approaches drawn from disability studies, the history of medicine, social work, and ethnography into a cohesive whole. This truly interdisciplinary volume is an impressive achievement by an impressive scholar, and I have no hesitation in enthusiastically recommending it."

"Drawing on extensive research in various fields as well as his own ethnographic study, Harold Braswell demonstrates that the US hospice system cannot continue to depend on family caregivers and points to a path for reform. The Crisis of US Hospice Care is essential reading not only for health professionals, policymakers, and academics but for all of us, because we and our families inevitably will confront the issues Braswell raises."

"The United States, with few exceptions, either pushes death to the corners of nursing homes and hospitals or heaps an impossible burden onto families and their homes. Braswell, rather than slouching toward assisted suicide, deftly articulates the cultural and structural changes required to give the dying and their families a nonviolent and freedom-giving alternative."

"The pressure on families at end of life, which makes many feel inadequate as caregivers and some to be that way, is well described by Braswell in his quest to strengthen hospice in America. You don't have to agree with the author's emphasis on freedom to recognize that he has written a useful book with an important political message: families need more state support to assist them in providing care for dying loved ones."

"With this elegant and deeply ethical guide on navigating the tasks of dying, Harold Braswell offers us a bracing ethnographic meditation on how love and work intertwine in end-of-life care. Focusing on the potential of hospice care, Braswell gathers personal, familial, and communal considerations into a set of policy recommendations that can guide how we manage the current demographic challenges of dying here and now."

"Reading The Crisis of US Hospice Care was a joyful experience... Braswell's use of emotional stories gave his argument a soul that could not be ignored and brought me on an unforgettable emotional journey... I believe this book should be read by every American that knows someone who is dying and/or will eventually die themselves."

"This book is an impressive example of the interdisciplinary scope that works of bioethics can attain. Readers well versed in the topic will find much that is familiar—but often with a new twist that keeps them on their toes. There is also much in these pages that challenges the conventional wisdom on end-of-life care that has evolved over the last half century."

"This book is an incisive account of U.S. hospice policy and practice since its origins in the late 1960s. But it is much more than that. Drawing insightfully on diverse perspectives including bioethics, the health humanities, and disability studies, the book is also an impassioned call for a political movement around the experience of dying that would not only redress policy flaws but make U.S. society more hospitable to dying people and their families and ultimately 'create a new basis for how we understand freedom, our collective mythology, and our national identity.'"

"Braswell's book is extremely accessible for audiences of any level while raising important questions... It would be a valuable reading for medical professionals, public health professionals, and anyone else interested in healthcare that is provided at a vulnerable time of peoples' lives."

"[T]his very important book should be required reading for both hospice professionals and bioethicists."