Which country is the best place to die? – Hungary fares better than expected

Unfortunately, it is a sad reality, but every person on earth will someday pass away. How people spend their last days and how they die are important questions, though.

To find out which countries provide good end-of-life, aka palliative care, Eric Finkelstein and his team of researchers took on the mantle of collecting data on the matter and creating a grading system of countries based on the quality of their palliative care. A suggestion of sorts of where it is the most peaceful or easy for people to pass away.

Bigthink.com interpreted their findings and published an article on the list of 81 countries.

Their method

Eric Finkelstein and his researchers first needed to establish what criteria to consider when creating the ranking. In order to do this, they systematically analysed 309 articles to identify the indicators of good palliative care.

Using the results of their detailed review, they determined 13 overall indicators on which they could build their ranking. They include:

• the places where healthcare providers treated patients were clean, safe, and comfortable;
• the patient was able to be cared for and die at their place of choice;
• healthcare providers provided appropriate levels and quality of life-extending treatments;
• healthcare professionals supported patient’s spiritual, religious, and cultural needs;
• care was well-coordinated across different healthcare providers;
• healthcare providers controlled pain and discomfort to the patient’s desired levels;
• healthcare providers helped the patient cope emotionally.

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According to Bigthink, while the indicators were established, further research was needed to establish how these indicators compared to each other, which ones were more important than others.