Living and Dying in the Past: The Continuity of Identity in Hospice

• In Event: 3129 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Home and Hospice Care

Abstract

Work on the relationship between identity and illness often describes patients’ experiences as reflecting a process of adaptation. At the same time, some scholars have observed that patients cope with the identity crises that occasionally accompany illness not by adapting, but instead by orienting themselves towards the past and working to maintain identity at the end of life. Theoretically speaking, then, how should we make sense of the contradictions between these existing understandings regarding adaptation and continuity? Centering our research on hospice, we sought to understand if and how there is a relationship between the social organization of an occupational project and its processes of shaping identity. Drawing on several years of ethnographic observations and 14 interviews from a hospice facility, we find that caregivers: interact with patients in a way that reflects patients’ occupational identity, encourage patients to personalize their physical appearance and living space, engage patients in efforts to overcome problems from their past, and prevent patients from interacting with each other in favor of outsiders. These efforts to tether patients’ past and present experiences are intended to serve the production of a “good death,” and reflect ideological components of the occupational project of hospice caregivers.

Authors

• Megan Penzkofer, Michigan State University

• Connor McCormick, Michigan State University

• Daniel A. Menchik, Michigan State University