Palliative Care and Communication

In this volume, the author seeks explanations for the sense of optimism about recovery that terminal patients with small-cell bronchial carcinoma - or lung cancer - have. Over a period of five years, she used ethnographic research methods to monitor the illness processes of patients from the time of the consultation during which they received the bad news until their death, from the perspectives of the various people involved: the patient, the patient's family and relatives, the doctors and the nursing staff. Based on narrative descriptions, interspersed with observations, the author makes it clear why things happen the way they do in practice. The book also gives an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and roles of those involved: informal codes, ambiguous messages, the dilemma between professional detachment and personal involvement, the patterns of information and communication during the various phases of the illness, the latent realization of approaching death, and the ambivalence of patients with regard to knowing and not knowing.