A Good Death: Are We Designing Aged Care for Living, but Not for Dying?

We design aged care services around living well. But what about leaving well? Death is inevitable in residential care, and yet most organisations have no clear framework for what a good death looks like. No structured training, no consistent rituals, and in some cases, no funding for the final day of care. So today Dane is turning the mic on Rose, to sit down and unpack the policies we don’t have, the conversations we avoid, and the leadership decisions that shape the final experience of life in care. Key moments: 0:00 - What shocked Rose when she first starting working in aged care and designing death 4:22 - What Rose learnt from experienced clinical staff about what actually shapes a good death 5:35 - Why aren’t we recording something as simple as the preferred place of death? 7:29 - Are we training our staff enough about how to design a good death? 9:34 - What are we doing that might be well-meaning but affecting the lives of residents and staff? 13:16 - Is there a right way to handle death in a residential facility? 16:02 - When we hide death, what is the cost? 17:04 - What happens when funding doesn’t recognise the final day of care? 19:23 - Switzerland is doing things differently: what designing for both living and leaving looks like 22:43 - The beautiful moment Rose got to share with her grandmother thanks to a nurse 26:08 - What leaders should be doing now