| Toward the end of the dying process, terminally ill patients
commonly experience periods of "confusion" during which they
talk about going home or taking a special trip. Sometimes the
dying see and talk to people who have already died. Health care
professionals often label the sometimes jumbled and rambling communications
of the dying as confusion and prescribe medication to cure their hallucinations.
There is a better way.
Those who work closely with the dying are aware the sometimes
jumbled and confused statements of the dying may be final
communications with very special meanings if we can decipher
them. Instead of thinking our patients have lost their minds and
prescribing them more medication, we must learn to communicate with
our dying patients in quiet, gentle was as we try to decipher their
special communications.
The patient may be trying to tell us death is imminent. Or,
they may be asking us to take care of some last unfinished business so
they can die peacefully. If we interpret the final
communications of the dying, we help relieve both the patient's and
family's anxieties and contribute to a peaceful death.
In their work with the dying Maggie Callanan Pflaum and Patricia
Kelley, recommend educating family members about the final
communications of the dying. When family members are aware of
common themes in the special communications of the dying, they can
help unravel the mysteries and share in the final gifts of the dying.
Common Themes - read about the
different meanings to what the dying is trying to communicate |
