中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: This study used in-depth interviews to explore the sense and impact of cancer illness events on terminal patients and their primary caregivers. Methods: Four patientcaregiver dyads (two male and two female patients with mean age 52.75; 4 female caregivers) were interviewed between one and five times in a hospital in eastern Taiwan. The interviews lasted for 20 to 50 minutes per time depending on the participants' state of mind. The data analysis procedures of carrying out phenomenological psychology were based on six steps: data collection, empathic immersion, meaning units, constituent themes, situated structure, and general structure. Results: First, the terminal patients lived under ambiguous conditions. Second, caregivers' life trajectories oscillated between the religious coping and forgotten memory recollection. Third, healing encounters occurred between patients and caregivers in the boundary of near death situation. They avoided talking about death with one another initially. Patients and caregivers faced ambiguous loss; they cannot comprehend what happened in that moment at first. Eventually, they understood the transformation in company meant the caring praxis as the re-building the ethical relationships. Conclusions: As experience of death, Being-towards-death can turn over the factical, thrown and limited whole of Being-There (Dasein) into the existential, projected and unlimited whole of Being- There. The end of life is meant to live completely to disclose the 'Dasein', what Beingtowards- death meaning is understood at this moment. Silent suffering is existential. The implications from this study and how to enact hospice care are discussed.