ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how one’s identity and ideology shape and justify present and future acts of coping by healthcare professionals treating terminally ill patients. It looks at how socially constructed death system helps shape identities, attitudes and acts of coping among oncology healthcare professionals. Maintaining control and a sense of balance are critical acts of coping when confronted with the death of others and one’s mortality. Consistent with views of symbolic interactionism, a social construction perspective on death, and nature of its death system, illustrates how the link between identity, ideology, and coping mechanisms are symbolically defined and acted upon within an oncology environment. The integration of death within the paramount reality of social existence is therefore of greatest importance for an institutional order. Erving Goffman’s theory on the self and emotional management may offer additional insight into the social construction and institutional order of death and the process of dying.
