Assess the Distress

First, ask questions to assess the level of distress of both the dying person and loved ones.  A death in old age can be very different from the death of a younger person from disease or accident.  Is the family in shock?

Do all the family members have the same religious viewpoint (ideally humanist!)  If not, what are the convictions of the dying person?  How much anxiety is produced in the family by the differing viewpoints?

In all eventualities, your first duty is comforting the dying person.  Avoid being triangulated into longstanding family debates on religion.

Assess:  What does the dying person want?  For example, some people “stay alive” (or hope to) for a particular life event–a graduation, a wedding, an anniversary, turing 90 or hundred.  The wishes vary, but the desire informs decisions.

Also remember:  there are many “hospice graduates.”  Medicine is an imprecise discipline and the human will is an amazing force.  Staring over the precipice of death and then pulling, or being pulled back, can produce very complex and stressful emotions for both the dying person and the family.

Hospice

Hospice care is a type of care and philosophy of care that focuses on the palliation of chronically ill, terminally ill or seriously ill patient’s pain and symptoms, and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs. In Western society, the concept of hospice has been evolving in Europe since the 11th century. Then, and for centuries thereafter in Roman Catholic tradition, hospices were places of hospitality for the sick, wounded, or dying, as well as those for travelers and pilgrims. The modern concept of hospice includes palliative care for the incurably ill given in such institutions as hospitals or nursing homes, but also care provided to those who would rather spend their last months and days of life in their own homes. It began to emerge in the 17th century, but many of the foundational principles by which modern hospice services operate were pioneered in the 1950s by Dame Cicely Saunders.

Wikipedia