No abstract

This place of death study includes more populations than any other known. In many populations, residential aged care was an important site of death for older people, indicating the need to optimise models of end-of-life care in this setting. For many countries, more standardised reporting of place of death would inform policies and planning of services to support end-of-life care.

GPs and practice nurses do not address sexual health issues proactively with patients, and this area warrants further attention if policy recommendations to expand the role of primary care within sexual health management are to be met.

Older people perceive factors they associate with 'home' as crucial to a good death, most notably presence of friends and family, but many anticipate that they would prefer to be cared for elsewhere when dying. These findings run counter to assumptions that the medicalised, institutional death cannot be a 'good death'. It is important that dying in hospital is not demonized, but rather efforts made to examine how institutional deaths can take on a more meaningful quality.