Introduction

Death was once an event managed at home with little medical interven-
tion (Howarth 2007 ). By the last few decades of the twentieth century,
in Western societies, death became something managed in hospitals
and actively overseen by medical professionals (Flory et al. 2004 ). As a
result, there has been considerable discussion about how to identify the
point at which end of life begins and how best to care for people at the
end of life. Such debates are particularly thought-provoking in intensive
care, where end-of-life discussions can seem at odds with the clinical
setting’s stated function: to admit critically ill patients and use advanced
medical interventions to achieve cure and recovery.
While many people admitted to intensive care survive their critical
illness (Brinkman et al. 2013 ), there are those for whom modern health

10

Organ Donation Practices and End-of-life

Care: Unusual Bedfellows or Comfortable

Companions?

Maureen Coombs and Martin Woods

© The Author(s) 2017
R.M. Shaw (ed.), Bioethics Beyond Altruism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_10

239

M. Coombs (*) · M. Woods
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]