The research reported here is an exploratory discourse analysis of a corpus of six end-of-life discussions in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), describing the structure and variations of the four phases of an end-of-life discussion in terms of the function of each of these phases: the Opening (Phase 1), Description of Current Status (Phase 2), Holistic Decision Making (Phase 3), and Logistics of Dying (Phase 4)...
Keywords: physician?patient interaction, end-of-life care, Decision Making, Intensive Care, bad news, palliative care, discourse analysis
01/2005 | Communication & Medicine, Walter de Gruyter