Establishing the Moral Authority of Formal Hospice Care in China: A Case Study of the Songtang Caring Hospital
Prueher, Lillian K.
2012
- This thesis is based on research conducted at China's first formal hospice hospital - the Songtang Caring Hospital in Beijing- during the summer of 2011. Incorporating interviews with doctors, nurses, and primary caregivers at that hospital, as well as over 40 hours of participant observation and analyses of a hospice textbook used by medical practitioners at that facility, this thesis examines ... read morehow formal hospice care has been interpreted in a Chinese cultural context; specifically, how the Songtang Caring Hospital's approach to hospice care is constructed around a series of direct and indirect attempts to establish formal hospice facilities as moral institutions. Those attempts are examined on theoretical, institutional and individual levels, as revealed through discussions of formal hospice care in hospice texts and descriptions of the Songtang Caring Hospital given by the people working there. The theoretical understanding of formal hospice care at the foundation of this thesis is then complicated by examining its effects on the organization and management of the Songtang Caring Hospital on an institutional level. Finally, that institutional understanding of formal hospice care is then further complicated by exploring how real-world factors and the subjectivities of both caregivers and patients influenced formal hospice care at the Songtang Caring Hospital on the level of individual caregiver-patient interactions.read less
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- tufts:UA005.016.097.00001
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