ABSTRACT
Dying away from home, and from a chronic disease, will become more common during the next decades, making the problem of "awareness" even more salient to everyone concerned. The social and psychological problems involved in terminality are perhaps most acute when the dying person knows that he is dying. Medical and nursing personnel commonly recognize that working with and around dying patients is upsetting and sometimes traumatic. The problem of "awareness" is crucial to what happens both to the dying patient and to the people who give him medical and nursing care. Other sociologists have duly taken into account this phenomenon of problematic identity, or assumed its existence, but few of them have analyzed awareness of identity and interaction in detail. The impact of each type of awareness context upon the interplay between patients and personnel is profound, for people guide their talk and actions according to who knows what and with what certainty.
