Talking about death when a parent with dependent children dies of cancer: A pilot study of the Family Talk Intervention in palliative care

Abstract

This study focused on families with dependent children who participated in the Family Talk Intervention (FTI) and lost a parent during the intervention or directly thereafter. The aim was to explore how they perceived information and communication about the imminent death during the illness trajectory and after the loss. Seven families from palliative homecare settings in Sweden participated. This study suggests that it is important to support family communication when a parent is dying, since communication in this situation is unlike everyday family communication, as they enter a complex and existentially unfamiliar area, hard to initiate on their own.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to all families that participated in the study, for sharing their experiences with us. We want to acknowledge the two interventionists for performing the intervention with the families. We also want to thank the specialized palliative homecare teams that helped with the recruitment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by Familjen Erling-Perssons Stiftelse.