TY - JOUR

T1 - Hospice or home? : expectations of end-of-life care among white and Chinese older people in the UK.

AU - Seymour, Jane

AU - Payne, Sheila

AU - Chapman, Alice

AU - Holloway, Margaret

PY - 2007/9

Y1 - 2007/9

N2 - This paper presents findings from two linked studies of white (n = 77) and Chinese (n = 92) older adults living in the UK, which sought their views about end-of-life care. We focus particularly on experiences and expectations in relation to the provision of end-of-life care at home and in hospices. White elders perceived hospices in idealised terms which resonate with a 'revivalist' discourse of the 'good death'. In marked comparison, for those Chinese elders who had heard of them, hospices were regarded as repositories of 'inauspicious' care in which opportunities for achieving an appropriate or good death were limited. They instead expressed preference for the medicalised environment of the hospital. Among both groups these different preferences for instututional death seemed to be related to shared concerns about the demands on the family that may flow from having to manage pain, suffering and the dying body within the domestic space. These concerns, which appeared to be based on largely practical considerations among the white elders, were expressed by Chinese elders as beliefs about 'contamination' of the domestic home (and, by implication, of the family) by the dying and dead body.

AB - This paper presents findings from two linked studies of white (n = 77) and Chinese (n = 92) older adults living in the UK, which sought their views about end-of-life care. We focus particularly on experiences and expectations in relation to the provision of end-of-life care at home and in hospices. White elders perceived hospices in idealised terms which resonate with a 'revivalist' discourse of the 'good death'. In marked comparison, for those Chinese elders who had heard of them, hospices were regarded as repositories of 'inauspicious' care in which opportunities for achieving an appropriate or good death were limited. They instead expressed preference for the medicalised environment of the hospital. Among both groups these different preferences for instututional death seemed to be related to shared concerns about the demands on the family that may flow from having to manage pain, suffering and the dying body within the domestic space. These concerns, which appeared to be based on largely practical considerations among the white elders, were expressed by Chinese elders as beliefs about 'contamination' of the domestic home (and, by implication, of the family) by the dying and dead body.

KW - hospice • palliative care • end-of-life care • ethnicity • Chinese • home care

U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01045.x

DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01045.x

M3 - Journal article

VL - 29

SP - 872

EP - 890

JO - Sociology of Health and Illness

JF - Sociology of Health and Illness

SN - 0141-9889

IS - 6

ER -