Managing End-of-Life Information in Palliative Care

Abstract

In this chapter, the author develop a sociological analysis of the role played by professional management of information about patients' end-of-life (EoL) processes in palliative care (PC). Thus the author will thus highlight the processes by which PC professionals manage private health information about patients in the frame of this type of care. Thus the author will show how managing information about prospective EoL trajectories by healthcare professionals is one of the major challenges in their daily work in PC wards. The author verifies that, in these contexts, patients and their families and members of the healthcare teams tend to have different experiential and personal careers in their relation with disease, the organization of care, and EoL trajectories, whose confrontation at the level of interaction produces complex effects in social processes that occur in daily activity contexts of PC.