Abstract
Background:
Clinical hypnosis appears to hold some promising effects for patients at end-of-life. Patients and health care professionals (HPs) are inclined to adopt the practice. Yet, the experience of hypnosis in this context remains under-researched.
Objectives:
To understand the process of integrating hypnosis into conventional care and the needs of palliative care patients and their relatives.
Design:
A qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews conducted between February 2022 and January 2023 in Switzerland. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis.
Setting/Subjects:
The total sample was composed of 44 participants, including 30 service users who received hypnosis (20 palliative care patients and 10 relatives) and 14 palliative care HPs, among whom 5 were hypnosis practitioners.
Results:
Based on the feedback of HPs, we mapped various practices of offering and integrating hypnosis in palliative care. Then, we identified five sub-themes relating to the participants’ experience of hypnosis and self-hypnosis: (1) factors influencing the choice to engage in hypnosis; (2) reasons for not recommending hypnosis; (3) effects and meaning of hypnosis; (4) difficulties and drawbacks; and (5) the perception of the practice of self-hypnosis.
Conclusions:
The practice of hypnosis is very diverse and constrained by resources and limitations in institutional support. Patients and relatives identified that hypnosis had a positive impact to enable them to recognize and mobilize their personal resources toward greater self-empowerment. Our findings suggest that hypnosis might hold a real potential for patients and their relatives, thus warranting further study of its effects in palliative care.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
