Hospitalization and Death Acceptance: A Meta‐Ethnography of Perceptions of Hospital as a Place of Death for Nursing Home Residents
Bridget Laging, Rachel MacLean, Jessica Dickson, Janine Alan · 2026
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Description
Bridget Laging and three colleagues synthesized interview studies on how people view hospitals as places where nursing home residents die. Policy pushes to keep dying residents out of hospitals, yet transfers remain common. The team searched four databases for qualitative studies published between 2012 and early 2024. Using a method that translates findings across studies into fresh interpretations, they built two overarching themes from residents', families', and clinicians' accounts.
One theme covered symptom control: hospitals felt impersonal but offered strong tools against pain and distress. The other covered acceptance: a hospital death felt legitimate because medicine's authority confirmed that everything possible had been tried. The authors call this a paradox worth facing honestly. They advise strengthening symptom care inside nursing homes, planning ahead with residents and families, and talking more openly about dying. Such steps could cut avoidable transfers while honoring what families actually seek at the end.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Bridget Laging, Rachel MacLean, Jessica Dickson, Janine Alan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 51 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |