Dying at Home: A Family Guide for Caregiving

A comprehensive guide for those caring for a loved one nearing the end of life.

Many people seek the comfort and dignity of dying at home. Advances in pharmacology and hospice care allow the dying to remain at home relatively free of pain and symptoms, but navigating professional services, insurance coverage, and family dynamics often compounds the complexity of this process. Extensively updated and revised, this third edition of Andrea Sankar's Dying at Home: A Family Guide for Caregiving provides essential information that caregivers and dying persons need to navigate this journey.

Featuring contributions by professionals and personal stories from in-depth case studies of family caregivers, this guide discusses the challenges, resources, benefits, and barriers to care at home. With updates on advance care planning, developments in palliative care medicine, and the availability of legally assisted dying, this edition discusses how to:
- Arrange medical care, nursing, and ancillary therapies
- Understand costs, sources of financial support, and insurance coverage
- Collaborate with health professionals in the home
- Assist in implementing pain management techniques
- Find social and spiritual support, as well as self-care for caregivers
- Handle family dynamics and legal matters
- Collaborate to make complex care and treatment decisions
- Navigate the process of dying and caring for the body after death

Andrea Sankar is a professor of medical anthropology at Wayne State University, where she is also the co-founder and co-director of the Social Work and Anthropology doctoral program. The former editor of Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Sankar was named Michiganian of the Year in 1995 for her work on HIV/AIDS. CM Cassady is a PhD candidate in social work and anthropology at Wayne State University who has worked with chronically ill and dying persons in California, Oregon, and Michigan.