Use of Euphemisms to Avoid Saying Death and Dying in Critical Care Conversations—A Thorn by Any Other Name

Abstract

The study by Barlet et al 1 revealed that although death was a frequent topic during family meetings about critically ill infants, the word death was rarely spoken. In an analysis of 33 clinician-family meetings that took place in a neonatal, pediatric, or pediatric cardiac intensive care unit setting, among the 406 identified references to death, die, death, dying, or stillborn were used only 8% of the time. The authors categorized the remaining 92% of references to death as euphemisms, in which the speaker replaces a harsher word such as death with language they anticipate will be less blunt, such as pass away. The authors further broke down this classification into 4 different types of euphemisms: survival framing (eg, not live), colloquialisms (eg, let her go), medical jargon (eg, code event), and pronouns without a clear antecedent (eg, it may happen soon).