12/19/2023

How the Language of Hospice Can Help Us Get Better at Discussing Death

Death's inevitability doesn't make it any easier to discuss

Just because death is inevitable doesn't make it easy or natural to talk about. In a new study, researchers wondered if hospice workers, experts in end-of-life care, had lessons to teach the rest of us when it came to speaking with patients and families about death.

Daniel Menchik, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona who studies the use of language in different fields of medicine, spent eight months sitting in on team meetings at a hospice care facility that were also open to patients' families. His goal was to study how both groups talked to each other about the impending death of the patient. His findings, which will be published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, reinforce the importance of framing death as a process rather than an outcome when caring for frightened patients and loved ones. It is a helpful strategy that he says everyone could use when facing loss.

"People aren't dead until they're dead," Menchik said. "And even then, they may not be experienced that way by the people that they are connected to, especially if they've had quality time with that person."

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.