Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 14, 2026
Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
Community Dwelling Adults' Lived Experiences of Participating in Death Cafés: A Phenomenological Study With
Wei How Darryl Ang1, Noriko Yamamoto-Mitani2,3, Ming Jun Kang1
1Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
Aim:
To explore community dwelling adults' lived experiences of participating in death café in Singapore.
Design:
A descriptive phenomenological study with Photovoice.
Methods:
A purposive sample of community dwelling adults who participated in a community-based death café was recruited for this study. Data was collected through online individual semi-structured interviews. The Colaizzi's six-step descriptive phenomenological analysis was conducted for data analysis.
Results:
Twenty community dwelling adults who participated in a death café were recruited. Participants' experiences of the death café were expounded in four themes: appeals of attending death cafés, enabling features of death café, engaging in die-logues, and perceived impacts of death café on everyday lives. The participants were attracted to death cafés for various reasons including curiosity and grief. A comfortable environment, accompanied by open dialogues and refreshments, was credited as enablers for death conversations. Through these 'die-logues', the participants had a deeper understanding of death and began engaging in advance planning.
Conclusions:
Death cafés provide a supportive environment for individuals to engage in death-related conversations that may not easily occur in daily life. By engaging in conversations about mortality within death cafés, participants are encouraged to take proactive steps towards advance planning.
Implications For The Profession And/Or Patient Care:
Findings from this study can guide the development of community-based interventions by highlighting the essential components required for a death café tailored to the Asian context.
Impact:
This study describes the community dwelling adults' lived experiences of participating in a death café. The findings from this study underscore the role of informal conversations about death as a tool to promote population health based palliative care initiatives such as overcoming death taboos and stimulating advance care planning among community dwelling adults.
Reporting Method:
The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies was used.
Patient And Public Contribution:
Community-dwelling adults participated in the interviews.
Related Concept Videos
01:21Kubler Ross's Stages of Dying
In denial, individuals reject the reality of their condition, often thinking, "This isn't true; I feel fine," as a way to protect themselves from...
01:29Life Histories
01:21Dimensions of Health and Illness
01:18Autophagic Cell Death
Autophagy and Apoptosis
Autophagy can activate apoptosis. In normal conditions, the autophagy activating protein Beclin-1 and...
01:27Erikson's Theory on Socioemotional Development during Adulthood
Intimacy Versus Isolation in Early Adulthood
Individuals in early...
01:30Overview of Cell Death
Cell death was observed in the early 19th century, but there was no experimental evidence to prove it. In 1842, Carl Vogt first discovered cell death in a metamorphic toad; however, it was not termed ‘cell death.’ Scientists discovered different cell death pathways only in the...