Narratives of hospice volunteers: Perspectives on death and dying.

Abstract

This study found that hospice volunteers' narratives function to make sense of death, warrant decisions for advanced preparation of their own death, illustrated an attempt to control their own death, transformed their identity into hospice representatives, and build community by establishing standard narrative formats. Moreover, ethnographic analysis revealed that additional psychosocial information provided by case managers during IDT meetings creates dialectical tensions for the care team. Future research is needed to understand communication apprehension with dying persons and to learn more about psychosocial information sharing in IDT meetings.

Advances in medical technology have prolonged life and consequently death. As a result, Americans are taking longer to die, thus necessitating the need to talk to dying persons as well as the need to talk about death. A narrative functional analysis was used to determine how hospice volunteers negotiate communication with dying persons and to further understand how their experiences with the dying impacts their lives. Additionally, a dialectical theoretical approach was used to investigate psychosocial information sharing by case managers during hospice interdisciplinary team (IDT) meetings.