Remembering the Art of Dying: lessons for medical trainees

In her book The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom (2020), Lydia Dugdale claims that a deep cultural forgetting process underlies contemporary society's impoverished views of, and practices surrounding, death and dying. Her thesis, and the cultural developments that trace this story of widespread forgetting, offer insight into how medical trainees come to participate in such impoverished views and practices, to the detriment of themselves and the patients they serve. Through better understanding the tacit metaphysical and ethical forces that contribute to this process, trainees might better appreciate the insidious power of such forces on their moral development. Moreover, by turning to traditioned communities outside of medicine and to patients themselves, medical trainees may find the moral resources to reimagine their roles both in providing care and attending to their own mortality.