Many people seek the comfort and dignity of dying at home. One hundred years ago, this was common. Advances in medical treatment and care have dramatically changed the home death experience. While medications and technology have made dying at home more feasible, modern treatments have resulted in people living much longer, often with multiple illnesses.

Dying at home in the 21st century may be more comfortable, but it is much more complicated. Pharmacology and hospice care advances allow the dying to remain at home managing pain and other symptoms with professional services available when needed to assist family caregivers. However, navigating these services, insurance coverage, and family dynamics often compounds the complexity of this process. Enabling home death for a loved one can be immensely rewarding and physically and emotionally exhausting.

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 find their way through this process.

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:

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• 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 an international expert in caregiving and end of life with NIH funded research. A professor of medical anthropology at Wayne State University and faculty at the Institute of Gerontology, she is 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.

                         is a Ph.D. candidate in social work and anthropology at Wayne State University. As a practicing medical social worker, she worked with chronically ill and dying persons in California, Oregon, and Michigan. Her research focuses on physician practices and decision-making in end-of-life and emergency medicine settings.