Abstract 9

Title: The Social Construction of the Meaning of Hope at the End of Life

Study Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use Van Dijik’s critical discourse approach to explore the social construction of hope at the end of life.

Procedures: Individual face to face qualitative open-ended interviews were conducted with three triads of a palliative cancer patient, a family member and a primary nurse . A total of 9 participants were interviewed (3 palliative cancer patients, 3 family members and 3 primary nurses). Forty-three newspaper articles from the National Post, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and the Regina Leader Post containing the words “ hope and cancer” in a 6 month time frame from January- July 2006 were collected and analyzed to explore how hope is socially constructed by newspaper depictions. All data was analyzed using Van Dijik’s critical discourse method.

Findings: The majority of the news paper articles were written about adolescents (9) and adults (24) and only three about older adults. The topics (81.4%) were about cancer prevention and treatment. The predominant discourse of hope in the newspaper articles was associated with cancer prevention, treatment and cure and youth. This is in contrast to the participant’s discourse of hope associated with comfort, relationships and a peaceful death.

Conclusion: The newspaper media on Cancer and hope is ageist and cure focused. This sends inconsistent message to those who are terminally ill, family members and primary nurses. As well the discourse on hope shows tension between the hope of persons with terminal cancer, their family member and primary nurse and society’s construction of hope.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the Sunrise Health Region palliative care staff and patients and families for facilitating this study. This study was funded by the University of Saskatchewan President’s SSHRC research grant.