The Hospice Farewell: Ideological Perspectives of its Professional Practitioners

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Abstract
This research examines a social service devoted to “good deaths” in our country: hospice. Using a modified Delphi technique, a national sample of hospice experts ( n = 48) was questioned in order to elicit group judgments about hospice ideology, the issue of control over one's own death trajectory, and hospice's relevance for older individuals. The respondents generally concurred that hospice, influenced by the work of Kübler-Ross, represents a radical departure in how we die, a reaction to the quality of death within a cultural climate of death denial, and, in some sense, a demodernization movement. While a high rate of consensus was obtained on many of the issues that evolved, little evidence of a coherent ideology could be detected linking notions of hospice origins, issues of patient control, and suitability of hospice care for older individuals.

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