healthmedicinet

Countries with a high quality of death have several things in common, including an effective national palliative care policy framework and extensive training resources for medical workers.

“The things that make a better death are so simple,” said Ros Taylor, national director for hospice care at Hospice UK. “It’s basic knowledge about good pain control and conversations with people about the things that matter — that could transform many more deaths.”

Gary Laderman, a professor of religious studies at Emory University whose specialty includes the history of death traditions and funerals, told The Huffington Post in 2013:

“What is certain is that we no longer only and exclusively turn to the ‘traditional authorities’ in these matters, the religious leader/institution, medical doctor, and the funeral home, but instead work with a wider range of cultural resources to make sense of death and dying, and living with the dead.” 

In the U.S., a national movement to get people talking about death over dinner is empowering people to make end of life decisions well before they reach their deathbed. There’s also the growing trend of Death Cafes, informal discussions hosted regularly in coffee shops in dozens of American cities, as well as in parts of Europe and the Asia-Pacific. 
“The more we talk about the issue in society the better it will be,” said Australia’s palliative care advocate Yvonne McMaster. “But the people who go to Death Cafes are people who choose to go to Death Cafés, not the average man on the street who would not have a conversation on death and dying—that’s the person you really need to engage.”

Below are the top ten countries with the best care for the dying: