clinical practice
clinical practice
Speaking of death
Ceased to be, passed away, carked it, died – what’ s the best way to tell next of kin that a loved one has died?
Deb Rawlings interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Telling someone their loved one is gone or has passed might seem like a gentle way to break the news of a death, but such euphemisms can lead to misunderstandings, a palliative care expert has cautioned.
Writing for The Conversation, Deb Rawlings, along with colleagues from Flinders University, said while euphemisms do have their place, being able to talk openly and clearly about death and dying is important as it helps normalise death and avoids confusion.
“ If health professionals use euphemisms, they need to consider whether patients really understand what they’ re trying to say,” Rawlings wrote.
Nursing Review spoke with Rawlings about the confusion that using euphemisms can cause, the reasons they’ re used and the potential situations in which they may be suitable.
NR: Tell us about the importance of terminology when discussing death and dying. DR: Let me first give you a bit of background so this has some context. I work for CareSearch, which is a free evidence-based palliative care website that has information for health professionals, but also for patients, carers and families. I go to conferences and such – we know what health professionals are talking about in the end-of-life space, but we don’ t ever hear the voice of consumers.
So, to start some conversations, we developed a MOOC, a massive open online course. They’ re free. They run for a few weeks usually, and quite often run through universities. We ran one last year and again this year. It ran for five weeks and was targeted at the Australian public, and that was how we promoted it.
In getting started, with the thought of people sitting in their homes at their computer talking about something or typing about something that could be quite complex and potentially confronting, we decided that the first week of the course would be a bit of an icebreaker, so we introduced a bit of humour – I put in a link to the Monty Python‘ dead parrot’ sketch – and if that didn’ t get people talking, then I didn’ t know what would. Then I did an activity. And this is the euphemisms one that we’ re talking about today. It was about the language that people use to talk about, or not talk about, or avoid talking about death and dying.
When we were explaining to participants, we said we wanted to hear about euphemisms or words or phrases that we use to avoid saying something directly. We provided the example‘ kick the bucket’ to get them started.
We had over 3000 people join the MOOCs – the combined MOOCs. They were from all over the world, which was very interesting and not what we expected.
All the activities were voluntary. We were only looking at the data from last year because that’ s all we’ ve had the chance to analyse yet, so just under 500 people did the euphemisms task. They provided over 3000 euphemisms at an average of about six each. These were things that they’ d heard of or had found online, so obviously some of them just went on to have a look. There were also over 100 comments made about the use of euphemisms. Many people wanted to say that while they found quite a few, they didn’ t generally use them in day to day language. Although the one that was commonly used was‘ pass’ or variations of that, such as‘ passed away’ and‘ passed on’.
The second one was‘ gone’, and again variations of that,‘ gone to heaven’,‘ gone to a better place’. So it was an interesting activity to start the course.
What were some of the other euphemisms participants said they used? Mostly‘ pass’ and‘ gone’ were the ones they would use in everyday language. The rest of them they had heard of. The reason they gave as to why they used euphemisms was that the words‘ death’,‘ dead’ and‘ dying’ were too harsh and needed to be softened in some way. One participant said she had got the impression that it was disrespectful to be direct and
16 | nursingreview. com. au