Faith and End of Life in Nursing Homes

Robert L Rubinstein,Miriam Moss,Patrick J Doyle,Helen K Black,Sidney Z Moss

doi:10.4061/2011/390427

Abstract

This paper explores the role of religious belief in the experiences of dying and death in a Catholic nursing home. The home appeals to residents and their families due to the active religious presence. Thus, religion is a salient element of the “local culture” which exists in this long-term care setting. The preeminence of faith within the organization and the personal religious convictions of staff, residents, and families may drive how death and dying are discussed and experienced in this setting, as well as the meanings that are attached to them. This paper examines the relationship between faith and the experience and meaning of death in this nursing home. We present themes that emerged from open-ended interviews with residents, family members, and staff, gathered between 1996 and 2004. The data indicate that people select the home due to their Catholic faith and the home's religious tone. Themes also show that belief in God and an afterlife helps shape the experience of dying and death for our informants. Our paper does not compare ease of dying with other nursing homes or within other belief systems.

Highlights

There has been little research focusing on the attitudes and meaning of death for individuals who are surrounded by death and often confront thoughts of their own mortality, for example older adults living in nursing homes [1,2,3,4,5]
There have been few studies that examine bereavement experiences and psychological manifestations of loss that compare people of faith— that might be defined— to others [6,7,8,9,10]. For old age, such a comparison might be made more difficult by the imminence of losses of all sorts
For the sake of anonymity we provide only scant details of the setting, which was a large, Catholic nursing home in North America

Summary

Introduction

There has been little research focusing on the attitudes and meaning of death for individuals who are surrounded by death and often confront thoughts of their own mortality, for example older adults living in nursing homes [1,2,3,4,5]. There have been few studies that examine bereavement experiences and psychological manifestations of loss that compare people of faith— that might be defined— to others [6,7,8,9,10]. Some families of people with Alzheimer’s disease may see their loved ones sometimes as experiencing a kind of predeath prior to physical death [11, 12]. This is a Catholic institution in which a felt relationship with God is one feature in a panoply of sometimes diverse and paradoxical ideas about God, suffering, and dying

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Conclusion