Graduation Year
2009
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Granting Department
Communication
Major Professor
Carolyn Ellis, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Eric M. Eisenberg, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Lori A. Roscoe, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Lodovico Balducci, M.D.
Keywords
Health, Ethnography, Narrative, Ethics, Mortality
Abstract
Hospices use interdisciplinary teams to aid patients and families as they cope with the imminence of death while helping them achieve a death free of physical and spiritual pain, also known as a good death. This study investigated the communication between hospice team members and their patients regarding spirituality, dying, death and a good death. Through 300 hours of participant observation and interviews with hospice staff at one large not-for-profit hospice in the Southeastern United States this project shows that team members understand patient's spirituality through a religious frame potentially compromising spiritual care. Talk between patients and their care team rarely focuses on what constitutes a good death and team members eventually come to narrate all hospice deaths as good.
Scholar Commons Citation
Tullis Owen, Jillian A., "Communicating Spirituality, Dying and a “Good Death” at the End-of-Life: The Role of Hospice Interdisciplinary Team Members" (2009). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/56
