The Illness Trajectory—For Patients with Cancer who Died in Two Different Cultures of Care

Abstract

The aim of this study has been to retrospectively examine the illness trajectory for a consecutive group of sixty-seven patients with cancer who died at a surgical department or were referred from there to an inpatient hospice ward where they died. Relatives of fifty-two patients were interviewed after the patient's death and all sixty-seven medical records were studied. The data was analyzed with support of Glaser and Strauss' concept of a dying trajectory. A surprising result was that as many as forty-four patients had a short trajectory, and nineteen of these had one month or less between diagnosis and death. Patients at surgical wards followed a faster trajectory and were in a somewhat poorer state of health when compared to patients at the inpatient hospice ward. In the case of trajectories within three months, there is no time to lose, and it is important that caring delay are avoided.