Between 2015 and 2021, 13.2% of deaths in Portugal occurred in emergency services, a figure that gradually increased from 10.6% in 2015 to 14.3% in 2021. The data are part of a study published in Annals of Emergency Medicine, one of the most influential scientific journals in the field of emergency medicine, and involved Sílvia Lopes, a lecturer at the NOVA NSPH – National School of Public Health of the University NOVA of Lisbon.
The study was coordinated by Bárbara Gomes from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra and is part of the European project EOLinPLACE – Choosing where we die: a revised classification to discern diversity in individual end-of-life trajectories, funded by the European Research Council.
“These results bring visibility to a reality that has been little discussed. Many people end their lives in emergency services, sometimes under challenging conditions, at a moment when it is especially critical to provide the most appropriate and humane care”, emphasises Sílvia Lopes.
The researchers argue that this knowledge can support the implementation of policies to improve end-of-life care, ensuring that emergency services are prepared to meet the needs of patients and families, while also promoting alternative forms of support, such as home care.
Among the 35 countries analysed, only Portugal (based on data provided by the Directorate-General of Health and collected through SICO – Information System of Death Certificates) and, to some extent, the United States and South Africa, record emergency services as a place of death. In the latter countries, 6.4% and 1.9% of people died in emergency and outpatient services, respectively.
For the team, this practice places the country in a privileged position to study this reality and contribute to an innovative international classification of places of death that includes emergency services.
In 2024, the same research team published studies with data on the percentage of people who prefer to die at home and the percentage who actually die at home. In this new article, the researchers highlight the need to “globally include emergency services as one of the places of death recorded on the death certificate, as part of an effort to harmonise how places of death are documented worldwide”.
Through the project and the various published studies, the research team aims to contribute to improving the provision of end-of-life healthcare, aspiring to transform how places where people receive care at the end of life, and ultimately die, are classified, creating a pioneering international classification of places of death that includes emergency services, something that is currently absent in the vast majority of countries.
Read the full article at: https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(25)00303-8/fulltext
