Meanings of eating deficiencies for people admitted to palliative home care.

Abstract

Food and eating are embedded in people's everyday social lives: at home with family members and as part of social interactions. For people with progressive life-limiting conditions, however, eating is often obstructed. The objective of the present study was to explore the meanings of living with eating deficiencies at the end of life among people admitted to specialist palliative home care. This qualitative inductive study employed an interpretive descriptive approach. A dozen persons, with various diagnoses and eating deficiencies, admitted to two specialist palliative home care units, participated. Data were collected through individual repeated interviews. Data collection and analysis were guided by the interpretive description method. The results reveal that eating deficiencies among people with progressive life-limiting conditions are existentially loaded markers of impending death. Finding ways to overcome declined food intake and hampered eating enabled our participants to feel able to influence their own well-being and remain hopeful. The results also showed that the eating deficiencies influenced participants' relationships and social interactions in ways that hampered their possibilities of sharing valuable moments together with friends and family members during the final period of life. Efforts to minimize the distress that people experience in relation to the challenges they face with eating deficiencies are important for well-being at the end of life. Person-centered approaches to acknowledge and support individuals' own ways of experiencing and dealing with their eating deficiencies are recommended that include a multidimensional perspective on food and eating.