ABSTRACT

Dying trajectories themselves, then, are perceived courses of dying rather than the actual courses. On any given service, the temporal organization of work with dying patients is greatly influenced by the relative numbers of recovering and dying patients and by the types of recovering patients. In short, both the illness careers and the hospital careers of all parties in the dying situation may be of considerable importance, affecting both the interaction around the dying patient and the organization of his terminal care. The already complex organization of professional activity for terminal care is made even more so by several other matters involving temporality. In the hospital, there is no question that terminal care, whether regarded as distasteful or as satisfying, is viewed as work. This work has important temporal features. For instance, there are prescribed schedules governing when the patient must be fed, bathed, turned in bed, given drug.