Patients, and doctors, aren't dying at home

That evening I leafed through last week?s issue of JAMA, which, unexpectedly, turned out to be entirely devoted to death, dying and the end of life. The issue was packed with intriguing articles that debated physician-assisted suicide, end-of-life care, statistics about death in different countries, the role of the I.C.U. But what caught my eye was a research letter tucked at the end, with the very medical-journal title of "Association of Occupation as a Physician With Likelihood of Dying in a Hospital." Written by colleagues of mine at New York University School of Medicine, the study tried to elucidate whether doctors died predominantly at home or predominantly in the hospital.