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World Suffering and Quality of LifeSuffering and Identity: “Difficult Patients” in Hospice Care

World Suffering and Quality of Life: Suffering and Identity: “Difficult Patients” in Hospice Care [Hospice care takes a variety of forms across the world, though the philosophy of “being there” remains similar across locations. Within the hospice approach, the suffering of the declining person is often not isolated to that single individual. Family members, paid care staff, and other healthcare workers feel their own pain when they experience the suffering of others. This chapter uses U.S.-based hospice workers’ descriptions of “difficult patients” to illustrate how hospice workers’ identities are related to suffering that extends beyond patients (diffusion of suffering). I find hospice workers suffer most when patients’ lives bring out the workers’ greatest fears, when patients remind them of their own personal loss, and when patients’ experiences make ethical questions salient. Each condition challenges the meaning of hospice work and identities, creating distress in hospice workers.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

World Suffering and Quality of LifeSuffering and Identity: “Difficult Patients” in Hospice Care

Part of the Social Indicators Research Series Book Series (volume 56)
Editors: Anderson, Ronald E.
Cain, Cindy L.
World Suffering and Quality of Life — Jan 7, 2014
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9 pages

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References (19)

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Copyright
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
ISBN
978-94-017-9669-9
Pages
91 –100
DOI
10.1007/978-94-017-9670-5_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Hospice care takes a variety of forms across the world, though the philosophy of “being there” remains similar across locations. Within the hospice approach, the suffering of the declining person is often not isolated to that single individual. Family members, paid care staff, and other healthcare workers feel their own pain when they experience the suffering of others. This chapter uses U.S.-based hospice workers’ descriptions of “difficult patients” to illustrate how hospice workers’ identities are related to suffering that extends beyond patients (diffusion of suffering). I find hospice workers suffer most when patients’ lives bring out the workers’ greatest fears, when patients remind them of their own personal loss, and when patients’ experiences make ethical questions salient. Each condition challenges the meaning of hospice work and identities, creating distress in hospice workers.]

Published: Jan 7, 2014

Keywords: Hospice; End-of-life; Death; Identity; Emotions; Work; Shared suffering

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