By Fiona Ellis
Friday July 16 2010
IRELAND has been ranked the fourth best country in the world in a new “quality of death” survey.
The survey, which measured the kind of care given to the dying, was carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
It comes despite a recent damning audit by the Irish Hospice Foundation which examined end-of-life care in Ireland and found serious lapses in the kind of standards expected.
The audit revealed serious differences in the quality patients experienced in hospitals. It also uncovered horrific personal accounts from relatives of people who died in medical facilities.
Yesterday’s survey rated the countries according to the quality of provision of care for those who are at the end of their life.
Ireland beat other comparatively rich countries like the US, Norway, Luxembourg and Canada with a score of 6.8 out of 10. It fell to 17th place, however, for the quality of the healthcare environment, outranked by countries like Hungary and Slovakia.
Commenting on the findings Paul Murray from the Irish Hospice Foundation said, “We are very pleased that Ireland got such a good index marking. However, a lot still needs to be done in hospice care, palliative care and end-of-life care in Ireland.”
The UK came top of the table with Australia and New Zealand second and third, respectively.
- Fiona Ellis
Irish Independent
