Harris, J.

All doctors, irrespective of their specialty or the setting in which they work, will care for patients who die. Around half of all deaths occur in hospitals. Evidence suggests that the quality of communication around this process is poorer in hospitals than in other settings, according to responses from relatives who have experienced bereavement. Over half of NHS complaints concern care of the dying.This article discusses how to best support relatives and carers at the end of a patient's life.

Official articulations of caring are socially constructed by their emergence from particular contexts. As a consequence, the political positioning of caring has the potential to vary in accordance with changes in welfare regimes. In Britain, a paradigm shift has occurred. In the social democratic welfare state, caring was a taken‐for‐granted resource to which social services were added. Following the community care reforms of the early 1990s, caring is the core resource and is seen as requiring management by social workers.