Existential Distress in Palliative Care

Project Description

Palliative care is fundamentally concerned with alleviating suffering in all forms; however, existential distress at the end of life remains one of the most complex yet least understood aspects of the patient healthcare experience. There has been limited exploration of how this form of debilitating distress specifically manifests in the final days and weeks of life, and how this may develop from existential suffering earlier in the illness trajectory. Indeed, the focus on the patient has been on alleviating physical suffering with less attention paid to mental health and wellbeing.

This PhD project will explore how existential distress is experienced by terminally ill adults in an inpatient hospice setting in the last stage of life. The aim of this work is to deepen our understanding of this form of distress, examine how it is recognised and responded to in practice, and contribute to the development of compassionate, patient-centred approaches to care.

This project will involve a combination of in-depth exploration of the lived experience of patients in an inpatient hospice setting with expert input to generate clinically relevant insights that can inform future palliative care practice. The approach will be qualitative, using sensitive qualitative methods of data collection and analysis that prioritise the patient experience and focus on understanding their mental health need at this end of life stage.