ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5, we examine death in the “real world” as we scrutinize interpersonal communication between patients, families, and healthcare providers. Telling patients, and their families, that their condition is terminal might be the most difficult conversation medical providers have. We report on research on healthcare providers’ reluctance to discuss death with patients and families and families’ ambivalence to those same discussions. We discuss cultural attitudes toward death, define a good death, and describe hospice care at the end of life. We discuss how hospice constructs a basic humanness for patients by de-medicalizing them, treating them with dignity, acknowledging them as fully human, participating in a reciprocal relationship with them, treating them as worthwhile human beings, and offering compassionate honesty.
