title: "I'm not trying to be cured, so there's not much he can do for me": hospice patients' constructions of hospice's holistic care approach in a biomedical culture.
abstract: The hospice philosophy was founded on a mission to provide comprehensive and holistic services to individuals at the end of life. Hospice interdisciplinary teams work together to offer therapies such as spiritual services, comfort care, and massage therapy to meet patients' physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs. Although the hospice philosophy is guided toward patient-centered care, limited research has examined how patients understand holistic care services. Through a social constructionist lens and qualitative interviews, we examined hospice patients' understandings of holistic care and argue that these perceptions of care are constructed through the biomedical model of medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah Nebel
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Pederson
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Studies, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-4052, USA.
authors.forename: Tara M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Emmers-Sommer
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006694:Holistic Health; D017051:Hospice Care / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D018447:Medical Futility / Q000523:psychology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D060685:Sense of Coherence; D016312:Treatment Refusal / Q000523:psychology