ArticleSupportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer2014
Making sense of continuous sedation in end-of-life care for cancer patients: an interview study with bereaved relatives in three European countries.
Article in Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Family members' experiences of palliative sedation -a systematic integrative review.BMC palliative care · 2026Pooled it
- Effects of sedative practices on grief in the spouse of a patient who has died of cancer. An international systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Continuous deep sedation until death in terminal cancer: a lexicometric analysis of professionals' and relatives' experience.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2025Article
- An easier way to die?-A qualitative interview study on specialist palliative care team members' views on dying under sedation.Palliative medicine · 2025Article
- End-of-life sedation and spousal grief: Exploring bereavement narratives with and without continuous deep sedation.Palliative care and social practice · 2025Article
- Article
- Medicalisation, suffering and control at the end of life: The interplay of deep continuous palliative sedation and assisted dying.Health (London, England : 1997) · 2022Article
- Family experience of palliative sedation therapy: proportional vs. continuous deep sedation.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2022Article
- Defining "Continuous Deep Sedation" Using Treatment Protocol: A Proposal Article.Palliative medicine reports · 2022Article
- How to measure the effects and potential adverse events of palliative sedation? An integrative review.Palliative medicine · 2021Review
- Palliative sedation and medical assistance in dying: Distinctly different or simply semantics?Nursing inquiry · 2020Article
- Still Searching: A Meta-Synthesis of a Good Death from the Bereaved Family Member Perspective.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Review
- Observational
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThe purpose of the study was to explore relatives' descriptions and experiences of continuous sedation in end-of-life care for cancer patients and to identify and explain differences between respondents from the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK.
methodsIn-depth interviews were held between January 2011 and May 2012 with 38 relatives of 32 cancer patients who received continuous sedation until death in hospitals, the community, and hospices/palliative care units.
resultsRelatives' descriptions of the practice referred to the outcome, to practical aspects, and to the goals of sedation. While most relatives believed sedation had contributed to a 'good death' for the patient, yet many expressed concerns. These related to anxieties about the patient's wellbeing, their own wellbeing, and questions about whether continuous sedation had shortened the patient's life (mostly UK), or whether an alternative approach would have been better. Such concerns seemed to have been prompted by relatives witnessing unexpected events such as the patient coming to awareness during sedation. In the Netherlands and in Belgium, several relatives reported that the start of the sedation allowed for a planned moment of 'saying goodbye'. In contrast, UK relatives discerned neither an explicit point at which sedation was started nor a specific moment of farewell.
conclusionsRelatives believed that sedation contributed to the patient having a good death. Nevertheless, they also expressed concerns that may have been provoked by unexpected events for which they were unprepared. There seems to exist differences in the process of saying goodbye between the NL/BE and the UK.
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