The meaning of the lived experience of hope in patients with cancer in palliative home care

Abstract

The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of the lived experience of hope in patients with cancer in palliative home care. Narrative interviews with 11 patients were interpreted using a phenomenological–hermeneutic method, inspired by Ricoeur. The findings revealed a tension between hoping for something, that is a hope of getting cured, and living in hope, that is reconciliation and comfort with life and death. This tension is highlighted, according to the views of the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, as a state of ‘recollection’. The interviewees told of the hope of living as normally as possible and of the experience of confirmative relationships as dimensions of their lived experience of hope. These findings show that hope is a dynamic experience, important to both a meaningful life and a dignified death, for those patients suffering from incurable cancer.