Abstract

This paper discusses the metaphors used by sixteen palliative healthcare professionals from around the United Kingdom in semi-structured interviews to describe what they see as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths. The interviews, conducted for the large-scale “Metaphor in End-of-Life Care” project, are set against the background of contemporary practices and discourses around end-of-life care, dying and quality of death. To date, the use of metaphor in descriptions of different types of deaths has not received much attention. Applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) we find that the difference between good and bad deaths is partly expressed via different frequencies of contrasting metaphors, such as ‘peacefulness’ and ‘openness’ as opposed to ‘struggle’ and ‘pushing away’ professional help. We show how metaphors are used to: evaluate deaths and the dying; justify those evaluations; present a remarkably consistent view of different types of deaths; and promote a particular ‘framing’ of a good death, which is closely linked with the dominant sociocultural and professional contexts of our interviewees. We discuss the implications of these consistent evaluations and framings in broader end-of-life care contexts, and reflect on the significance of our findings for the role of metaphor in communication about sensitive experiences.

Highlights

  • This paper focuses on metaphors used to describe ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths in semistructured interviews with sixteen UK-based healthcare professionals in hospice or palliative care

  • The project investigated how healthcare professionals, patients and unpaid family carers use metaphor to talk about their experiences, attitudes and expectations of end-of-life care, and what this might suggest about their needs, challenges, and emotions, as well as potential causes of anxiety and/or misunderstanding

  • In this paper we discussed the metaphors used by sixteen UK-based hospice professionals to describe good and bad deaths

Read more

Summary

Introduction

This paper focuses on metaphors used to describe ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths in semistructured interviews with sixteen UK-based healthcare professionals in hospice or palliative care. 100) argue that the construction of a good death in late-modern Western societies relies on the notions of “control, autonomy, dignity, awareness, and heroism” This, they suggest, reflects a social context that is individualistic, increasingly secular, values independence, self-mastery, self-care, and believes in the power of medicine. Cipolletta and Oprandi (2014) for example, point out that patient autonomy is considered important in countries like the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia, but less so in Italy and Sweden Despite such acknowledgements of the sociocultural variability of what counts as a good or bad death, the medical-revivalist discourse seems to dominate. After a more detailed description of our data and methods, we focus on the metaphors they used to describe good and bad deaths and discuss the unified professional view that emerges

Data and method
Findings and discussion
A good death
A bad death
Concluding remarks

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.