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Research Collaboration Focuses on Unfinished Business at the End of Life
November 18, 2009Hospice workers have seen patients hang onto life to tell someone they love or forgive them. Researchers from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University will study what drives the dying to resolve unfinished business. The approach of Barbara Daly and Mary Jo Prince-Paul from nursing and Julie Exline from arts and sciences is to relieve psychological distress by marshaling the patient's inner strengths. These qualities include hope, optimism and connectedness that they mustered before their terminal illnesses. While resiliency has shown to improve the psychological outlook of healthy people, researchers will find out the benefits in the severely ill. Researchers have avoided including dying patients in research, but a goal is to give hospice patients options to participate in research. With a National Institute of Nursing Research grant, researchers will establish the BEST Center (Building End-of-Life Science through Positive Human Strengths and Traits) to encourage research by recruiting and supporting faculty research. Full release.