Living whilst dying: exploring 'a life worth living' for people with heart failure living at home towards the end of life

Thesis

BACKGROUND: End of life literature is dominated by narratives of deterioration and death. Research is predominantly conducted in hospitals or hospices, involving terminal illnesses such as cancer during the final weeks or days of life. For those with heart failure, health can fluctuate over months and years through turbulent trajectories from diagnosis to (sometimes unexpected) death. Through anthropological exploration of everyday bodily experiences of living, I sought to...

Expand abstract

Authors: Pilbeam, CS

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: sensory methods; phenomenology; heart failure; anthropology; meaning-making; ethnography; death and dying; end of life; qualitative
• Subjects: Primary health care; Heart failure; Medical anthropology; Applied anthropology