Documentary film: “A Good Death”

Documentary film: “A Good Death”

Professor Robin Taylor wants to change the way that we care for people with long-term, but inevitably fatal medical conditions as they reach the end of their lives. Instead of writing another academic paper, he decided to take a completely different tack and commission a film about the issues.

“I’m a respiratory specialist and I realized that the care we were providing to patients with chronic respiratory disease at the end of their lives was often missing the mark.”

For more and more of us the end of life is shaped by chronic organ failure; the heart, the kidneys, or the lungs may gradually pack up. The journey often involves declining health over many weeks or months, and during that time the individual concerned and their families often struggle to come to terms with what lies ahead – death.

The diagnosis of ‘dying’ is often avoided by health care professionals as much as by the patient, and this may mean that treatment, especially if the patient arrives in hospital severely ill, may be inappropriate. Medical interventions motivated by a ‘we can fix it’ mentality, may now be futile and simply prolong the discomfort rather than relieve it.

“Two families recently expressed their appreciation, but also their frustration at the way their loved ones had been looked after in Dunedin Hospital. The problem was that our efforts to help had prolonged their deaths rather than prolonged their lives. The patients’ families felt that what was done was caring, but nevertheless inappropriate. We had been insensitive to what was really needed: an understanding of their situation and help in coming to terms with it. In response to all of this, we have begun to change the way we do things and are now much more attentive to the issue of dying well.”

Dying well is not euthanasia. It involves pro-active, supportive care and palliative treatment. It involves being honest and having open discussions about dying sooner rather than later. The aim is to address uncertainties and relieve deep anxieties and make the end of life experience easier for everyone involved.

“I’ve spent a substantial part of my career writing papers for journals read by specific sectors of the medical establishment, but this time I wanted to reach beyond my own specialty. I wanted to influence the thinking of my colleagues in other disciplines and to change the perception of the general public as well. To do that I realized would need a different approach so I asked Dr. Paul Trotman, a doctor and filmmaker, to make a film with me, one looking at how people are cared for as they are dying from chronic respiratory disease. “

This film is the result. It follows the experience of Martin Cavanagh, a patient with severe emphysema, and his family during the last year of his life. It provides a close-up look at the struggles that they went through and explores the issues that needed to be reconciled in someone with a terminal illness which is not cancer.

It’s a poignant film, but not a depressing one. It deals with the concept of advanced care planning and challenges the health care model with which we currently approach end-of-life care. It encourages meaningful responses from patients, family members, doctors and nurses in the way they handle end-of-life suffering. Although Martin died from emphysema, his story is equally relevant to other common medical conditions.

The documentary was sponsored by the Asthma Foundation of New Zealand, the Healthcare Otago Trust, and Boehringer Ingelheim (NZ). It is being made available to members of the public on a not-for-profit basis through the Asthma Foundation website: www.asthmanz.co.nz

Please feel free to link to the film from your blog or website.

Produced by: Dr. Paul Trotman and Professor D. Robin Taylor.
Directed by Paul Trotman. Camera & Editing Scott Mouat.

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