Maintaining hope when close to death: insight from cancer patients in palliative home care

This article reports the social and psychological processes that 11 cancer patients receiving palliative home care used to keep their hope alive.

The patients described their ways of dealing with hope in interviews and diaries, and it was from these accounts that the processes were extracted, using a grounded theory methodology.

Two main processes emerged: maintaining life and preparing for death. When the patients focused on maintaining life, they tried to preserve its meaning and to communicate with others about life and death. They found it helpful to shift their focus and to involve fellow 'travellers' in their journey. To prepare for death was to take responsibility for the future and to see possibilities of living on even after death.

This paper revealed two parallel and interdependent processes used by patients in the palliative care phase to maintain hope and respond to living close to death.