Holding On And Letting Go: Making Sense Of End-Of-Life Care Decisions In Families

Making medical care decisions for a family member at the end of life is an emotional and complex experience for families. To understand how families make sense of this process, we used Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT) to analyze discourses around the struggle between holding on and letting go. From in-depth interviews with individuals about their family communication during end-of-life (EOL) decision making, two overarching discursive contradictions in families' meaning making emerged: family members' wishes versus patient's wishes and emotionality versus rationality. These contradictions provide insight into how families make sense of EOL decisions, including the process of decision making and who makes or influences those decisions, which has implications for a family's healing after the loss of a family member.