Table 3.

The changing nature of death and dying (adapted from Lofland)⁴⁷

	Before 1950	1950	2019
Level of medical technology	Low	Increasing	High and increasing
Detection of terminal disease	Poor	Improving	High
Definition of death	Simple	Still simple	Complex
Deaths from acute disease (mostly rapid)	High	Still high	Low
Deaths from injuries (mostly rapid)	High	Still high	Lower
Deaths from chronic disease (mostly slow)	Low	Increasing	The majority
Length of dying	Short	Still mostly short	Long
Passivity in response to a person dying	Common	Decreasing	Gone in western medicine
Involvement of doctors in dying	Low	Increasing	High
Number of doctors in UK per 100 000 people	Fewer than 26	26	280
Familiarity with death among the population	High	Still high	Low
Activities to manage death (death awareness campaigns, advance care planning, assisted dying, etc)	Low	Low	High
Community involvement in death and dying	High	Falling	Low
Meaning in death and dying	Mostly supplied through faith and faith organisations	Faith and faith organisations still have an important role	Inadequately supplied by multiple organisations, including the health system