Verified Document

Facing Death: Living With Life-Threatening Essay

In this context, the patient and family members provide support to each other by discussing death, illness, and pain in a direct and open manner. In a family facing life-threatening illness, a closed awareness style would involve a great deal of secrecy. All conversations would have to direct attention away from the prospect of illness and death so as to keep the patient unaware. This would place a great deal of emotional strain on the family members, as they would carry the burden of their knowledge as well as the weight of the secret. The suspected awareness style would be equally difficult, as family members would be placed in the position of perhaps having to actively lie to the patient once they grew suspicious. This would make open and productive communication near-impossible, as there would be a lack of trust on both sides. The conversations in a family operating under a mutual pretense style would involve a complex system of rules and code words all designed to avoid...

There would be a great deal of pressure on all family members to not break the agreed-upon silence which could result in individuals retreating from the family unit or becoming angry. The conversations that take place amongst families engaging in the open awareness style are characterized by detailed discussions about the illness, death, and the emotions surrounding these pivotal events. Although the family members and the patient may be just as fearful or upset about death as those families who utilize the other styles of communication, the open awareness style allows for a greater level of mutual support. These awareness styles may change over the course of an illness as the patient and his or her family receive more details about the prognosis from health care providers.
References

DeSpelder, L.A. & Strickland, A.L. (2008). The last dance: Encountering death and dying. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sources used in this document:
References

DeSpelder, L.A. & Strickland, A.L. (2008). The last dance: Encountering death and dying. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Words: 2128 Length: 7 Document Type: Term Paper

Latour takes several steps to repair the damage done to the church by the moral misdeeds of rogue priests and, to a certain extent, the American and Mexican governments. Latour dispatches Valliant to Albuquerque and, in Valliant's travels, he performs sacraments and admonishes a priest for gambling with parish funds. Latour, for his part, helps rescue Magdalena from the abusive Buck Scales and orders the founding of a girl's school

Life After Death
Words: 6235 Length: 20 Document Type: Term Paper

Life After Death Introduction classical point of departure in defining Death seems to be Life itself. Death is perceived either as a cessation of Life - or as a "transit area," on the way to a continuation of Life by other means. While the former presents a disjunction, the latter is a continuum, Death being nothing but a corridor into another plane of existence (the hereafter). A logically more rigorous approach

Costs of Denial in the Death and Dying Process
Words: 4587 Length: 15 Document Type: Research Paper

Denial in the Death and Dying Process Identification of the Problem: Denial and Subsequent Lack of Communication of the Impending Death Death is a natural phenomenon and has been there since the existence of mankind. In the past, people used to accept the death or impending death of a loved one easily because they knew that there was little that they could do about it. However, with the advancement in health

African-American Women Living With AIDS
Words: 5100 Length: 15 Document Type: Term Paper

(Archie-Booker, Cervero, and Langone, 1999) This study concludes that: "...power relations manifested themselves concretely through these factors in the social and organizational context, which by defining African-American learners as generic entities, produced undifferentiated educational programs." (Archie-Booker, Cervero, and Langone, 1999) The work of Gilbert and Wright reports a study conducted through collecting a series of articles in which African-American women were interviewed concerning living with AIDS. They write in their

Leisure May Be the Death of Europe
Words: 967 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Leisure May Be the Death of Europe Economics Time to Kill In his article, Time to Kill - Europe and the Politics of Leisure, Steven Muller examines the efforts of Europe to reconstitute itself in the aftermath of the Cold War. By analyzing such factors as economics, politics, social functions, labor and unemployment, the author concludes that, in contrast to the prevailing sense of optimism, Western Europe is in fact facing a period

Water and Our Life
Words: 830 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Rachel Carson, she asserts that water is our most precious natural resource and goes on to state that "most of the earth's abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts" (1) and therefore "in the midst of this plenty we are in want" (1). Okay, so let's examine this particular argument; first she says that the earth's abundant water

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now