Being-With Dying: Authenticity in End-of-Life Encounters

Families and their dying members have notably unmet needs. This is in large part due to health professionals being unprepared to be authentic (emotionally appropriate, purposive, and responsible) in end-of-life encounters. Martin Heidegger’s interpretive phenomenology informed this study, providing background, structures, language, and metaphors to interpret narratives for patterns of authentic being-with dying among nurses who attend to dying. Semistructured interviews elicited tacit knowledge imbedded in the experiences of those nurses and showed how they comport themselves in end-of-life situations. Patterns emerged in a presence of authentic being-with dying, which assisted persons in their transitions toward a peaceful death. Patterns are explicated in a 5-point framework, which paralleled Heidegger’s structures of authentic being-toward-death.