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Section 4.3 Class Exercise
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Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have all adopted approaches to end-of-life care that blend palliative care and curative medicine in ways that are specific to the needs of individual patients and their caregivers. In contrast, the United States employs a dichotomous approach to end-of-life care that imposes a rigid dividing line between curative health care and health care that is oriented to symptom control and the psychosocial supports reserved for final stages of illness.

  1. Identify what you believe to be the top three impediments to the development of a more integrated approach to palliative care in the United States.
  2. Explain your reasoning.
  3. Choose one of the impediments and suggest what might be a policy strategy for overcoming it.
Document Date: September 11, 2009
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