Reply to Hope, optimism, and the importance of caregivers in end‐of‐life care

Dialysis Organization Online Information on Kidney Failure Treatments: A Content Analysis Using Corpus Linguistics

“… 9 Of course, in general, there is a need to maintain hope in prognostic and QoL discussions and related materials, but the limited body of research on hope suggests hope, often defined as belief in the abilities to attain future goals, can still occur in the face of serious or terminal medical conditions. 52 Indeed, maintaining hope and truth telling are not mutually incompatible; in fact, because hope needs to be tied to what is attainable, misconstrued optimism “becomes detrimental if not tragic as the patient’s health declines and decisions about end-of-life care are made.” 53 Yet, it should be acknowledged that talking about prognosis can be difficult for physicians, and so, support for physicians in sharing prognostic information with patients (to the extent each patient wants it) is much needed. 54 …”