“Our Relationship Is Also About Food.” Relatives Faced With the Cessation of Feeding in Patients in Palliative Care Units
This article proposes to examine a specific situation in a Parisian palliative care unit: the decision to stop feeding a patient in end-of-life care. The survey showed that this moment, which is also a process, is regularly the subject of tension between relatives and health professionals. We shall see that these tensions involve more general issues around the meaning of a ‘good death’ (Castra, 2003) and the relationship with the dying patient. By looking more closely at the relatives who are present ‘until the end’ with the sick, we will try to show that, beyond the intimate issues and the difficulty related to the situation itself, there are political issues surrounding the recognition of skills and the roles around the patient.