THE HOSPICE KIND OF CARE: A WORK OF LOVE (DEATH, NURSING, EDUCATION).
Contributors: University of California, Los Angeles.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 141
Subjects: Education, Philosophy of.
Description: During the past two decades, authors of what has been termed the "death and dying literature" have been calling attention to what they believe to be a gap in the health-delivery system in the United States. What is meant by "gap" is that the PERSONAL care afforded terminal patients seems often to lack an elusive interest in the dying patient as an individual who might be helped in spirit even though his physical body is beyond cure.

Terminal CANCER patients have been chosen as the concern in this inquiry because, during the past decade, health-care organizations called "hospice programs" have been recognized because of the success of their members not only in administering in a unique way to the medical needs of persons dying of cancer but in understanding and empathically listening to the dying persons as well. Members of hospice programs seem to be dispositionally attuned to the moral employment of certain grounding principles. These might be stated broadly as the principles of hope, of respect, and of love. Seemingly derived from these principles is another, which is fundamental to hospice care-giving--that terminal patients "be enabled to die easily and at peace.".

After presenting a brief history of what has been called the "hospice movement," the ethical relationship of the four principles is developed through a philosophical dialogue with Kierkegaard, Kant, Nietzsche, and St. Augustine, putting the "conversation" directly and indirectly into the context of hospice care-giving. The emphases laid in hospice regimen on the elimination of pain and on the maintenance of the physical comfort and the emotional and mental well-being of the patient is shown as perhaps being grounded on the principles of hope, respect, and love and on certain assumptions which would seem bound up with the principles.

The ethically enriched principles are then presented as possible prods which might in time pervade an educator's "fundamental curriculum." This curriculum might, then, not only sustain the instructor of prospective care-givers in the "practical" matter of his own "soul-care" but help him indirectly "awaken" trainees in regard to their own as well, perhaps an ultimate goal.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-01, Section: A, page: 0098.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 1984.

School code: 0031.