Dying now.

In a random sample of 262 deaths, 21% of the patients lived alone and a quarter of the caring relatives were over 70 years old. The difficulties of the relatives were more often a cause for hospital admission than those of the patients. Health professionals and relatives differed considerably in their assessment of the same case. 24% of relatives were especially grateful to their general practitioners but 37% were critical. The uncaring attitude of the hospitals was criticised by 27% of the relatives, although hospital nurses were the most praised of all professionals. Symptom control was of variable quality. The community nurse categorised the quality of life in the final illness as poor or very poor in 44% of cases.