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Purpose: To explore how families respond to the death and dying of their loved ones in a hospital setting, archival research was conducted using eight qualitative articles describing next-of-kins’ perceptions of end-of-life care in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs). The articles were based on the qualitative arm of the VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) study entitled, “Best Practices for End-of-life Care and Comfort Care Order Sets for our Nation’s Veterans” (BEACON).

Design: The archival research consisted of an interactive methodological process of data immersion, analysis, and interpretation which resulted in the emergence of two overarching thematic frameworks called “losing control” and “holding on.”

Findings: “Losing control” is the process that occurs when the patient experiences a cascading sequence of deleterious biological events and situations rendering the caregiver no longer able to direct the timing or setting of the dying trajectory. The notion of “holding on” captures family member’s responses to the need to maintain control after relinquishing the patient’s care to the institutional setting. During the patient’s hospitalization, the dual dynamics of “losing control” and “holding on” unfolded in the spatial, temporal, and life narrative domains.

Originality: The findings not only contribute to better overall understanding of family members’ responses to death in the pre-COVID-19 hospital setting but also heighten the awareness of the complex spatial, temporal, and narrative issues faced by family members who lost a hospitalized loved one during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.

We wish to die peacefully in a manner suited to our values and taste. We also wish to be attended at our deathbed by people whom we love and try to find meaning in death. Here, I evaluate nursing of dying patients with regard to alienation of life and death from our daily living, problems concerning the judgment of death, how to die in a manner that fits the person's values and taste, and nursing for spiritual healing with traditional views of life and death, and cultural background of attending dying persons of the Japanese.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the ways in which the Supreme Court of Canada has shifted away from transcendent/religious to nonreligious conceptualizations of assisted dying.

A discourse analysis of a Supreme Court of Canada case on assisted dying and the facta of the 26 associated interveners.

The research points to a shift away from religious to nonreligious understandings in the way the Court conceptualizes suffering, pain, illness and assisted dying.

This paper contributes to the understanding of nonreligion as a social phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the history of official policy on the regulation of care homes in respect of end of life care and to contrast this with the results of research on this important theme, not least in terms of what is required to support care home staff in relation to dying residents and their relatives. A central concern is to argue for the open recognition that care homes now cater primarily for frail people towards the end of their lives. Good end of life care and a good death could become a positive “selling point”. The author concludes that the system of regulation has broadly failed to address a good death or good end of life care in a residential home. Death talk should no longer need to be avoided in care homes. The research suggests that appropriate support for care home staff in relation to dying residents needs careful identification and investment. A cultural shift is required.

Following a review of policy documents on regulation and standards of care in residential homes and a subsequent review of the research literature on death and dying in care homes, the paper illuminates the contrast between the ambitious aims in policy documents with very varied practice in everyday care of frail residents.

The recent systems of regulation have broadly failed to address a good death or good end of life care in residential homes. Open acknowledgement of death and dying should not be avoided in care homes. Appropriate support for care home staff in relation to dying residents needs careful identification and investment.

The focus of this paper is to contrast official policy with everyday practice. Whilst policy documents suggest recognition of the importance of dignity and respect from dying residents, the research literature indicates great variation in the practice of everyday care.

Life, in many ways, is simply grief waiting to happen. It is the emotions of death – simultaneously something ordinary and universal as well as extraordinary and unique – that we try to capture and make sense of with the notion of ‘grief’. The so-called ‘corona pandemic’ that has spread throughout the world during the past 2–3 years is in many ways a crisis of global proportions that, at its very core, is caused by and concerned with the fear of death and dying from a deadly disease. So far, six million people have died in the corona pandemic. The ways we grieve and mourn our dead are indicative and informative of the society/culture in which we live and the values, norms and ideas that prevail within it. This chapter deals with the emotion and practice of grief as it is particularly related to experiences of death and dying in a contemporary Western corona-ridden society. I explore challenges relating to the display of emotions, ritual practice and ceremonial closure – as well as the paradoxical way in which the corona pandemic has inaugurated a new great disappearing act of death and grief at a time when death and grief have been paramount experiences for many affected people. Today, we know more about grief than at any other time in human history, but the question remains whether we have become any better at accepting it, dealing with it and living with it.

People with learning disabilities often have to cope with death, dying and bereavement without being fully informed of the circumstances and sometimes without being told that death is imminent or indeed has occurred. This paper explores the issues associated with death and dying from the perspective of people with learning disabilities, and considers proactive ways of working in this sensitive area.

This paper aims to understand the impact of emotional labour in specific health care settings and its potential effect on patient care.

Multi‐method qualitative ethnographic study undertaken in a large ICU in Sydney, Australia using observations from patient case studies, ward rounds and family conferences, open ended interviews with medical and nursing clinicians and managers and focus groups with nurses.

Clinician attitudes to death and dying and clinicians' capacity to engage with the human needs of patients influenced how emotional labour was experienced. Negative effects were not formally acknowledged in clinical workplaces and institutional mechanisms to support clinicians did not exist.

The potential effects of clinician attitudes on performance are hypothesised from clinician‐reported data; no evaluation was undertaken of patient care.

Health service providers must openly acknowledge the effect of emotional labour on the care of dying people. By sharing their experiences, multidisciplinary clinicians become aware of the personal, professional and organisational impact of emotional labour as a core element of health care so as to explicitly and practically respond to it.

The effect of care on clinicians, particularly care of dying people, not only affects the wellbeing of clinicians themselves, but also the quality of care that patients receive. The affective aspect of clinical work must be factored in as an essential element of quality and quality improvement.