Hôpital Universitaire et patient en phase terminale

Statistics for 1984 show that 59% of people die in hospitals: 27% at home and 8% in homes for the aged. This article looks at the situation in a teaching hospital, the Erasmus University Hospital in Brussels. After a brief description of the associated clinics, tables list the contributions made by teaching hospitals to increased life expectancy in the population and principal cause of death statistics. It is suggested that increasingly the hospital will be confronted with terminal cases; a return home to die is often impossible. Even if the home could be adapted to allow for the terminal care of a relative often the family finds it difficult to cope with this idea and prefers hospital based terminal care for a relative.