Deathcare

Deathcare (also death care, death-care or after-deathcare) is the planning, provision, and improvement of post-death services, products, policy, and governance. Here, deathcare functions to describe the industry of deathcare workers, the policy and politics surrounding deathcare provision, and as an interdisciplinary field of academic study.[1]

See also: Death care industry in the United States
Deathcare processes. Clockwise from upper left: Body laying in a mortuary, morgue slabs with preparation tools, headstones, and funeral procession.

Deathcare, from the point of clinical death, has a diverse timeline. The first point of care often involves immediate healthcare professionals and responders closest to the person who has past away, including doctors, nurses, palliative and end-of-life care workers.[2] From here, the care of deceased individuals has a culturally, religious, and personal course. This can involve a range of people from religious figures, morticians, to grave keepers - all of these roles formulating to what can be known as deathcare workers.[3]

Etymology

The word deathcare is a compound term from the words death and care. It can also take the form of death care,[4] however this is mostly used in the United States and Canada in the Anglosphere, where deathcare is a preferred variation elsewhere in the English speaking world reflecting on the preferred version of healthcare in places like the UK, Australia, India, etc.[5]

History

The provision of deathcare has historically[6] and often continues to be a highly decentralized and diverse practice combining multiple actors and stages.[7][8]

20th century

Recently, particularly with social phenomenon like the growth of the welfare state and urbanisation of population centres, central government involvement with the deathcare process has risen as socital challenges present themselves to deathcare.

21st century

Examples of government policy involvement including the impact of new burial methods like human composting[9] to pressures like COVID-19 placing on those involved with deathcare as well as their families.[10][11][12]

Delivery

Government

National and regional governments are often responsible for providing the legal framework for deathcare to operate within, including laws and guidance on what deathcare techniques, practices, and what individuals/ organisations are involved. However, this has a varying level of non-government organisations, third-sector, religious, and private organisations (such as funeral homes)[13] take part in both providing and shaping deathcare policy and practice.[14][15] However, most research on state interactions within deathcare is limited to the US, with further research needed elsewhere.[16]

Governments can also become a major focal point for deathcare services in specific situations, such as with deaths in the military, prisons, or in extraordinary events. COVID-19 is an example of global governmental intervention to provide mass fatality management to cope with high human fatality around the world.[16] This also brought up issues of inequality and inequity within deathcare as some deaths throughout the pandemic were treated as "more tragic" compared to others, highlighted as a public values failure as economic productivity and social worth overruled public health and humanity.[17]

Industry

There is a global marketplace for deathcare in the produces, services, and insurance that surrounds someone's death.[18]

Deathcare Industrial Complex (DIC) has been outlined as a concept, mirroring the military-industrial complex concept, in at least the US and potentially Western countries as an industry: "profit-driven, medicalised, de-ritualized and patriarchal [in] form, modern death care fundamentally distorts humans’ relationship to mortality, and through it, nature".[19]

Localized efforts to reform and offer innovative deathcare practices can be seen in the natural deathcare movements such as human composting to natural buriels.[20][21]

Journals

References
  1. Marsh, Tanya (2018). "The Death Care Revolution" (PDF). Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy. 8 (1): 1–4.
  2. Hill, Christine (1997-11-12). "Evaluating the quality of after death care". Nursing Standard. 12 (8): 36–39. doi:10.7748/ns1997.11.12.8.36.c2487. ISSN 0029-6570. PMID 9418467.
  3. Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; University of Colorado Boulder MENV (2021-10-24). "Essential Death care workers briefing book" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-10-24. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  4. KOPP, STEVEN W.; KEMP, ELYRIA (2007). "The Death Care Industry: A Review of Regulatory and Consumer Issues". The Journal of Consumer Affairs. 41 (1): 150–173. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6606.2006.00072.x. ISSN 0022-0078. JSTOR 23860018.
  5. "Healthcare vs. health care – Correct Spelling – Grammarist". grammarist.com. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  6. Spellman, W. M. (2015). A brief history of death. London. ISBN 978-1-78023-504-2. OCLC 905380333.
  7. Gordon, Michael (2015-01-29). "Rituals in Death and Dying: Modern Medical Technologies Enter the Fray". Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal. 6 (1): e0007. doi:10.5041/RMMJ.10182. PMC 4327323. PMID 25717389.
  8. Brennan, Michael (2014). The A-Z of death and dying : social, medical, and cultural aspects. Santa Barbara, California. ISBN 978-1-4408-0343-7. OCLC 857234356.
  9. "Human composting could be the future of deathcare". the Guardian. 2020-02-16. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  10. APPG PPG for Funerals and Bereavement (2021-01-01). APPG 2020 2021 Annual Report.
  11. Center, Columbia Business School-the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship. "Digitization In Deathcare". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  12. Denborough, David; Sanders, Cody J. "Death-care practices in the shadow of the pandemic: Can history help us?". International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work (2): 20–33. doi:10.3316/informit.143604328113399 (inactive 28 February 2022).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2022 (link)
  13. West Park Healthcare Centre, Ontario, Canada; Anderson, Barbara (2017-05-17). "Facilitating person-centred after-death care: unearthing assumptions, tradition and values through practice development". International Practice Development Journal. 7 (1): 1–8. doi:10.19043/ipdj.71.006.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. United States Government Accountability Office (2011). "DEATH SERVICES: State Regulation of the Death Care Industry Varies and Officials Have Mixed Views on Need for Further Federal Involvement" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-05-18. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
  15. UK Competition & Markets Authority (2020). "Funerals market investigation: Quality regulation remedies" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-06-16. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
  16. Entress, Rebecca M.; Tyler, Jenna; Zavattaro, Staci M.; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem (2020-01-01). "The need for innovation in deathcare leadership". International Journal of Public Leadership. 17 (1): 54–64. doi:10.1108/IJPL-07-2020-0068. ISSN 2056-4929. S2CID 228855678.
  17. Zavattaro, Staci M.; Entress, Rebecca; Tyler, Jenna; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem (2021). "When Deaths Are Dehumanized: Deathcare During COVID-19 as a Public Value Failure". Administration & Society. 53 (9): 1443–1462. doi:10.1177/00953997211023185. ISSN 0095-3997. S2CID 236312716.
  18. PR Newswire (2021). "Global Death Care Services Market Report (2021 to 2030) - COVID-19 Impact and Recovery". Retrieved 2021-10-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. Westendorp, Mariske; Gould, Hannah (2021). "Re-Feminizing Death: Gender, Spirituality and Death Care in the Anthropocene". Religions. 12 (8): 667. doi:10.3390/rel12080667.
  20. Olson, Philip R. (2018-06-01). "Domesticating Deathcare: The Women of the U.S. Natural Deathcare Movement". Journal of Medical Humanities. 39 (2): 195–215. doi:10.1007/s10912-016-9424-2. ISSN 1573-3645. PMID 27928653. S2CID 43800390.
  21. Harker, Alexandra (2012). "Landscapes of the Dead: an Argument for Conservation Burial". Berkeley Planning Journal. 25 (1). doi:10.5070/BP325111923.
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