TY - JOUR
T1 - Preparing End-of-Life Talks in Palliative Care
T2 - Exploratory Remarks on a Social Process
AU - Cotovio Martins, Alexandre
AU - Binet, Michel
AU - Monteiro, David
AU - Brás, Oriana
N1 - info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/6817 - DCRRNI ID/UIDB%2F04647%2F2020/PT#
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/6817 - DCRRNI ID/UIDP%2F04647%2F2020/PT#
UIDB/04647/2020
UIDP/04647/2020
PTDC/SOC/30092/2017
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In this article, we develop an exploratory analysis of some of the interactional strategies developed by palliative care (PC) professionals in order to prepare end-of-life (EoL) talks with patients and their families, namely in the frame of specifically social problem-solving work which they develop on a daily basis. In this sense, our object of analysis is not EoL talks in themselves, but the broader social processes that tend to precede them in PC, that is, all the work both of approaching the patient and his or her family and of coordination within the teams that PC professionals routinely do in order to propitiate EoL talk. In this way, we don’t envisage EoL talks as a conversation between two parties, with a patient on one side and a doctor on the other side, but as a wider social process which relies upon strong and previous professional engagement. The analysis conducted herein was carried out on data collected under the projects ETIC – Managing EoL trajectories in palliative care: a study on the work of healthcare professionals (Ref. PTDC/SOC-SOC/30092/2017) and Building paths towards death: an analysis of everyday work in palliative care (Ref. PTDC/CS-SOC/119621/2010), both financed by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT); in particular the data obtained through 17 months (12 in the first project and 5 in the second one, still in progress) of ethnographic observation carried out at two hospital internment units providing PC in Mainland Portugal and 42 (37 in the first project and 5 in the second one, still in progress) in-depth interviews to professionals in PC – physicians, nurses, and social workers. As main results, we present several theoretical and empirical elements relevant to the analysis of the field of EoL communication in the context of interactions between healthcare professionals, patients and their families. Following earlier studies on the same theme, we show how the work of preparing EoL conversations refers to a broader social process preceding those conversations. We believe that our findings may contribute to elucidating this dimension of the intervention of PC professionals, thus being instrumental for the future definition of systematised guidelines and recommendations in the framework of PC.
AB - In this article, we develop an exploratory analysis of some of the interactional strategies developed by palliative care (PC) professionals in order to prepare end-of-life (EoL) talks with patients and their families, namely in the frame of specifically social problem-solving work which they develop on a daily basis. In this sense, our object of analysis is not EoL talks in themselves, but the broader social processes that tend to precede them in PC, that is, all the work both of approaching the patient and his or her family and of coordination within the teams that PC professionals routinely do in order to propitiate EoL talk. In this way, we don’t envisage EoL talks as a conversation between two parties, with a patient on one side and a doctor on the other side, but as a wider social process which relies upon strong and previous professional engagement. The analysis conducted herein was carried out on data collected under the projects ETIC – Managing EoL trajectories in palliative care: a study on the work of healthcare professionals (Ref. PTDC/SOC-SOC/30092/2017) and Building paths towards death: an analysis of everyday work in palliative care (Ref. PTDC/CS-SOC/119621/2010), both financed by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT); in particular the data obtained through 17 months (12 in the first project and 5 in the second one, still in progress) of ethnographic observation carried out at two hospital internment units providing PC in Mainland Portugal and 42 (37 in the first project and 5 in the second one, still in progress) in-depth interviews to professionals in PC – physicians, nurses, and social workers. As main results, we present several theoretical and empirical elements relevant to the analysis of the field of EoL communication in the context of interactions between healthcare professionals, patients and their families. Following earlier studies on the same theme, we show how the work of preparing EoL conversations refers to a broader social process preceding those conversations. We believe that our findings may contribute to elucidating this dimension of the intervention of PC professionals, thus being instrumental for the future definition of systematised guidelines and recommendations in the framework of PC.
KW - critical moments
KW - end-of-life talks
KW - end-of-life trajectories
KW - palliative care
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102676636&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1360780421997839
DO - 10.1177/1360780421997839
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102676636
SN - 1360-7804
VL - 27
SP - 236
EP - 250
JO - Sociological Research Online
JF - Sociological Research Online
IS - 2
ER -