A singing choir: Understanding the dynamics of hope, hopelessness, and despair in palliative care patients. A longitudinal qualitative study

Abstract

Our findings offer insight into hope, hopelessness, and despair over time, and the metaphor of a choir helps to understand the coexistence of these concepts. The findings also help healthcare professionals to address hope, hopelessness, and despair during encounters with patients, which is particularly important when the patients' physical condition has changed.

Experiences of older people following an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A phenomenological study

“…This study shows how the initial feelings of patients are quite bleak in terms of their outlook and indicate that this is an important message for nurses as some form of emotional intervention following an acute episode may be beneficial. Indeed, other work with COPD patients has also indicated the sense of hopelessness as being a feature of the emotional response to an exacerbation of COPD (Olsman, Leget, Duggleby, & Willems, 2015).…”

The variety of hope: findings in palliative care patients’ medical records

“…Second, hope might not just be a reaction to suffering and death, but also an active attitude in order to give suffering and death a meaning in human life (Breitbart et al 2015;Olsman et al 2015). Hope seems to be so intimately wrought into human nature that it lasts until death.…”

“…However, the active will to recover can coexist with feelings of fear, anxiety, and resignation within the human psyche. Olsman et al (2015) also emphasize this aspect in palliative care settings. The following quotes exemplify this important feature of hope qua psychological disposition: hope can accommodate other, even opposing feelings, such as anxiety or despair.…”

“…In palliative care, hope is used to implement a goal-oriented therapy called "living with hope" (Kylmä et al 2009). Also Olsman et al (2015) suggested in their interview study that palliative care patients relate hope to a gain in the near future. Furthermore, hoping appears to be redemptive: no patient in the analysed data hopes for deterioration, but for an improvement of their present condition, for alleviation of symptoms: In this quote, hope appears to offer a response to cope with pain, and possibly with exhaustion.…”

The relation between cultural values, euthanasia and spiritual care in the Netherlands

“…34 Some of the patients were interviewed more than once. Of these patients, 48% reported to be not spiritual, 28% considered themselves to be monotheistic, and 24% said they had a spiritual belief not related to one God.…”