Not unlike the way Dr. Benjamin Spock changed the way that people think about young children and the early years in life, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross changed the way much of the world thinks about the other end of life, death and dying.

Kubler-Ross died this week at her home with family and friends around her. She was 78. In recent years, she had suffered a number of strokes that left her partially paralyzed.

By addressing such a universal experience as death and grief, Kubler-Ross revolutionized the way the medical community and people in general think about and deal with death. Her groundbreaking 1969 book "On Death and Dying" introduced the five, now well-accepted, stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Prior to the work by Kubler-Ross, death as a subject for discussion or study was taboo. Her studies were based on hundreds of interviews with dying patients. Her motivation to change the way death and dying are dealt with came when she began working at a New York City hospital after graduating from medical school in her native Switzerland in 1957.

As uncomfortable as her matter-of-fact approach to death made some people, her irrefutable conclusion that "death is part of life," is now the cornerstone of much of the world's thinking about the final stage of life. By demystifying death, something everyone on earth will experience and deal with as loved ones die, Kubler-Ross helped bring a universal experience out of the darkness.

Because of her groundbreaking work on such a difficult subject and her impact on health care, Time magazine listed her among the "100 most important thinkers" of the 20

th

century.

While conducting interviews with dying patients, Kubler-Ross's aversion to the way medical technology formerly placed dying patients in a cold, clinical and unfeeling environment led to her promotion of the hospice concept, where dying patients remain among family and friends in the familiar surroundings of their own homes. Removal from the clinical hospital setting creates a more comforting environment for the patient as well as their loved ones.

Kubler-Ross testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 1972 on her belief in hospice care. In 1974, the first hospice legislation was introduced, but not passed in Congress. But over the next 10-15 years, hospice care has become more accepted. It is now generally accepted as a part of the health care continuum.

Kubler-Ross was a woman of great courage and conviction who changed the way the world thinks about and deals with death. Her own death this week is a milestone being marked around the world by thoughts of appreciation from the millions of people who have benefited by her work.