Negotiating natural death in intensive care

Recent empirical evidence of barriers to palliative care in acute hospital settings shows that dying patients may receive invasive medical treatments immediately before death, in spite of evidence of their poor prognosis being available to clinicians. The difficulties of ascertaining treatment preferences, predicting the trajectory of dying in critically ill people, and assessing the degree to which further interventions are futile are well documented. Further, enduring ethical complexities attending end of life care mean that the process of withdrawing or withholding medical care is associated with significant problems for clinical staff. Specific difficulties attend the legitimation of treatment withdrawal, the perceived differences between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’ and the cultural constraints which attend the orchestration of ‘natural’ death in situations where human agency is often required before death can follow dying. This paper draws on ethnographic research to examine the way in which these problems are resolved during medical work within intensive care. Building on insights from the literature, an analysis of observational case study data is presented which suggests that the negotiation of natural death in intensive care hinges upon four strategies. These, which form a framework with which to interpret social interaction between physicians during end of life decision-making in intensive care, are as follows: firstly, the establishment of a ‘technical’ definition of dying-informed by results of investigations and monitoring equipment — over and above ‘bodily’ dying informed by clinical experience. Secondly, the alignment of the trajectories of technical and bodily dying to ensure that the events of non-treatment have no perceived causative link to death. Thirdly, the balancing of medical action with non-action, allowing a diffusion of responsibility for death to the patient’s body; and lastly, the incorporation of patient’s companions and nursing staff into the decision-making process.