ABSTRACT

B. Glaser and A. Strauss, comment briefly that the death of the child, because of his high social value and the incongruity of his death, creates organizational strains upon the hospital system. Research for this study was carried out in a midwestern city’s two pediatric hospitals. The major goal of the two hospitals to which all staff subscribed was to return the patient, healthy, to the outside. In terminal cases, these goal is not possible, hence, the goal rather becomes to maintain life for a period of time or to make death as painless and unstressful as possible. Hence, one may hypothesize that staff efforts to adjust will be greater when deaths which are not defined to be certain occur than they will when deaths which are defined to be certain occur. Thus, deaths that were uncertain involved greater efforts to adjust both in terms of their increased involvement with the patients and in requiring renegotiations in regard to work.