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Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses
BACKGROUND: End-of-life (EOL) conversations are highly important for patients living with life-threatening diseases and for their relatives. Talking about the EOL is associated with reduced costs and better quality of care in the final weeks of life. However, there is therefore a need for further cl...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7607873/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33138799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-020-00675-1 |
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author | Bergenholtz, Heidi Missel, Malene Timm, Helle |
author_facet | Bergenholtz, Heidi Missel, Malene Timm, Helle |
author_sort | Bergenholtz, Heidi |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: End-of-life (EOL) conversations are highly important for patients living with life-threatening diseases and for their relatives. Talking about the EOL is associated with reduced costs and better quality of care in the final weeks of life. However, there is therefore a need for further clarification of the actual wishes of patients and their relatives concerning EOL conversations in an acute hospital setting. AIM: The purpose of this study was to explore the wishes of patients and their relatives with regard to talking about the EOL in an acute hospital setting when living with a life-threatening disease. METHODS: This study is a qualitative study using semi-structured in-depth interviews. A total of 17 respondents (11 patients and six spouses) participated. The patients were identified by the medical staff in a medical and surgical ward using SPICT™. The interview questions were focused on the respondents’ thoughts on and wishes about their future lives, as well as on their wishes regarding talking about the EOL in a hospital setting. RESULTS: This study revealed that the wish to talk about the EOL differed widely between respondents. Impairment to the patients’ everyday lives received the main focus, whereas talking about EOL was secondary. Conversations on EOL were an individual matter and ranged from not wanting to think about the EOL, to being ready to plan the funeral and expecting the healthcare professionals to be very open about the EOL. The conversations thus varied between superficial communication and crossing boundaries. CONCLUSION: The wish to talk about the EOL in an acute hospital setting is an individual matter and great diversity exists. This individualistic stance requires the development of conversational tools that can assist both the patients and the relatives who wish to have an EOL conversation and those who do not. At the same time, staff should be trained in initiating and facilitating EOL discussions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s12904-020-00675-1. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7607873 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76078732020-11-03 Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses Bergenholtz, Heidi Missel, Malene Timm, Helle BMC Palliat Care Research Article BACKGROUND: End-of-life (EOL) conversations are highly important for patients living with life-threatening diseases and for their relatives. Talking about the EOL is associated with reduced costs and better quality of care in the final weeks of life. However, there is therefore a need for further clarification of the actual wishes of patients and their relatives concerning EOL conversations in an acute hospital setting. AIM: The purpose of this study was to explore the wishes of patients and their relatives with regard to talking about the EOL in an acute hospital setting when living with a life-threatening disease. METHODS: This study is a qualitative study using semi-structured in-depth interviews. A total of 17 respondents (11 patients and six spouses) participated. The patients were identified by the medical staff in a medical and surgical ward using SPICT™. The interview questions were focused on the respondents’ thoughts on and wishes about their future lives, as well as on their wishes regarding talking about the EOL in a hospital setting. RESULTS: This study revealed that the wish to talk about the EOL differed widely between respondents. Impairment to the patients’ everyday lives received the main focus, whereas talking about EOL was secondary. Conversations on EOL were an individual matter and ranged from not wanting to think about the EOL, to being ready to plan the funeral and expecting the healthcare professionals to be very open about the EOL. The conversations thus varied between superficial communication and crossing boundaries. CONCLUSION: The wish to talk about the EOL in an acute hospital setting is an individual matter and great diversity exists. This individualistic stance requires the development of conversational tools that can assist both the patients and the relatives who wish to have an EOL conversation and those who do not. At the same time, staff should be trained in initiating and facilitating EOL discussions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s12904-020-00675-1. BioMed Central 2020-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7607873/ /pubmed/33138799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-020-00675-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bergenholtz, Heidi Missel, Malene Timm, Helle Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title | Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title_full | Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title_fullStr | Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title_full_unstemmed | Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title_short | Talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
title_sort | talking about death and dying in a hospital setting - a qualitative study of the wishes for end-of-life conversations from the perspective of patients and spouses |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7607873/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33138799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-020-00675-1 |
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