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Abstract

The study is seeking to explore the dying process as a phenomenon in which relations of power occur in the form of governance of conduct in palliative care settings in Brasilia/Brazil. The findings revealed a real concern from both practitioners and nonpractitioners about the quality of death. It became evident that quality of death is a common objective in palliative care practice, but significant differences were found regarding what quality of death means. Analysis of discourse revealed that normative ideas of what a good death is and how to obtain it through palliative care conflicted directly with someone who understood a good death differently. With that said, good death became a contested space between two different cultures.The palliative care practitioners that participated in this study showed that there are tendencies to achieve the best quality of death possible. It also showed a normative narrative of a good death based on the Western palliative care movement. The palliative care narrative of a good death has established a constricted image of what a good death should be transforming it into not only a norm but also in the ultimate objective of palliative care practitioners. We then concluded that the term ‘good death’ is functioning as a rhetorical device used by practitioners to conduct the patients and their families to achieve a certain way of death.

Biography

E-mail: keyla.montenegro@uws.ac.uk