Erica Borgstrom
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 148928 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Erica Borgstrom |
| NOMBRES | Erica |
| APELLIDO | Borgstrom |
| FIRMA | BORGSTROM E |
| AFILIACIONES | The Open University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1009-2928 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 126 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2011 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Processes and partitions
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork with palliative care teams in the UK to contrast two logics of end‐of‐life medical care: one oriented towards intervention, the other towards acceptance and accompaniment. Through a series of illustrative cases, the authors describe how each logic not only shapes what practitioners do, but how they imagine the object of their care. The article traces these contrasting practices to different conceptuali…
Home death as a conditional ideal
Advance care planning is a process that involves ascertaining and documenting a patient’s preference for future care, especially in the context of end-of-life care. Based on an ethnographic study of advance care planning involving fieldwork in an English teaching hospital in 2018, this paper highlights how for healthcare staff, advance care planning is about more than patient preferences. Instead, for staff, advance care planning links to notions…
Not intervening as a form of care
Biomedicine is organized around interventions. Despite growing concern about overtreatment in healthcare systems, not intervening can still raise questions about potential negligence and the quality of care. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with palliative care teams in England, we explore the work palliative care specialists do to reduce and sometimes halt interventions for patients at the end-of-life, in a general medical environment that is lar…
Exploring the experiences of distance learning students being supported to resubmit a final assignment following a fail result
This study explores the experiences of five distance learners at a UK university who needed support to resubmit their final assignment following a fail result. Having received written feedback on the submission, we asked how this could be best delivered to inform and motivate a successful resubmission. Written feedback alone was found to be insufficient for these students to feel supported. There is a need also for a human connection to provide ‘…
British unpaid carers’ perspectives on what impacts their resilience when providing end-of-life care at home
Support from family or friends is fundamental to people dying at home. Understanding what impacts unpaid carer resilience is essential if services are to support them effectively. Seven databases were searched using a scoping review methodology. Delimiters included date, geographical area and language. A total of 647 articles were identified, with 11 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Most studies focused on coping strategies ( n = 9), not …
Multidisciplinary team meetings
Multidisciplinary team meetings are part of the everyday working life of palliative care staff. Based on ethnographic material from community and hospital palliative care teams in England, this article examines these meetings as dynamic routines. Although intended to have a prescribed format to review deaths and collect standardised information to monitor service performance, in practice, the content and conduct of the meetings were fluid, reflec…
Grieving academic grant rejections
Bidding for research funding has increasingly become a main feature of academic work from the doctoral level and beyond. Individually and collectively, the process of grant writing - from idea conceptualisation to administration - involves considerable work, including emotional work in imagining possible futures in which the project is enacted. Competition and failure in grant capture are high, yet there is little discussion about how academics e…
Human and Person When Life Is Fragile
In this paper, we focus on how medical staff care for people who are dying and on the increasing use of diverse technologies to ease the experience of dying. Because it is accepted patients cannot recover, the primary value to preserve life underpinning much of biomedical practice is contrasted by a commitment to make people's last period of life as fulfilling and meaningful as possible. Drawing on illustrative cases from an ethnography of pallia…
Unpacking Sensitive Research
Group-based Tai Chi as therapy for alleviating experiences of social death in people with advanced, incurable disease
Advanced, incurable disease is a highly stressful and traumatic life event that can lead to losses of social identity, social connectedness, and losses associated with bodily disintegration. The combination of these losses makes it difficult to remain socially active and sometimes results in experiences of social death. However, few studies have explored the role of group-based hospice activities for mitigating the impact of social death in peopl…
The implications of Covid ‐19 on health and social care personnel in long‐term care facilities for older people
This scoping review mapped out the existing literature pertaining to health and social care personnel experiences during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and their work in a long-term care setting for older people. This review identified the gaps in the implications of health and social care personnel's own health and well-being during the pandemic as well as the ethical dilemmas inherent in providing care during the COVID-19 pand…
Standardising care of the dying
The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was a prominent set of guidance in the late 2000s and early 2010s within palliative and end-of-life care. Developed in England to improve the care of dying patients, it was later adopted in 20 counties. After a public scandal, it was removed from practice in England but remains in other locations, including the Netherlands. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data, from England and the Nether…
Ways of ‘Being With’
Palliative care professionals often speak of the importance of forming meaningful relationships with patients and their families. Trust and rapport, usually established over extended periods of time through face-to-face interactions, and a ‘gentle honesty’ regarding end-of-life and death are key aspects of developing a sense of intimacy with people who are approaching the end of their lives. A fundamental feature of this intimacy is conveying a s…
Placing death and dying
Over the last decade, policies in both the UK and many other countries have promoted the opportunity for patients at the end of life to be able to choose where to die. Central to this is the expectation that in most instances people would prefer to die at home, where they are more likely to feel most comfortable and less medicalised. In so doing, recording the preferred place of death and reducing the number of hospital deaths have become common …
Rethinking end of life care
Internalising ‘sensitivity’
Research about dying is viewed as inherently sensitive because of how death is perceived in many societies. Such framing assumes participants are ‘vulnerable’ and at risk of ‘harm’ from research. Simultaneously, with increasing recognition of the importance of reflexivity, researchers can become (deeply) preoccupied with their actions and experiences in the field. Whilst reflexivity is often described as a helpful process, in this paper we consid…
Unpacking sensitive research
We are living in turbulent times. The hashtag #MeToo went viral in 2017; the death of George Floyd propelled the Black Lives Matter movement back into international headlines; and the emergence of COVID-19 has brought to the fore issues around illness, death, dying and bereavement, it seems that emotions and sensitivities are running high for many people, if not for everyone. In 2018, when we conceived this special issue, we noted in our proposal…
"We come in as "the nothing
In our ethnographic study of palliative care in a UK medical setting, we concerned ourselves with instances when medical staff chose not do something, which we came to call 'noninterventions'. Such instances raised an obvious question: how does one study something that is not happening? In this Position Piece, we outline three ways in which we have tried to engage with this methodological question, from the initial grant application process to th…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
Introduction
As early career researchers studying the end of life, we recognise that scholarly activity in the field of death studies – an umbrella term for research spanning all aspects of death, dying and ber
Dying
Alex Broom's new book on dying takes a sociological analysis to the end of life creating what he calls a ‘sociology of dying’ (p. 3). The book covers topics from communicating and managing transitions at the end of life, the normativity of the hospice, and the embodied experiences of dying. Throughout the text, Broom seeks to draw out different perspectives - those of the patient, family and carers, and the professionals - to describe end of life…
Images of hospices on social media
Social death in end-of-life care policy
Social death denotes a loss of personhood. The concept of social death is engaged with in English end-of-life care policy that sees social death before physical death as a problem. Policy-makers posit that dying persons are likely to be subject to a social death prior to their physical death unless they play an active and aware role in planning their death, facilitated through communication and access to services. Such a view foregrounds a vision…
Applying social theory to understand health-related behaviours
Health-related behaviours are a concern for contemporary health policy and practice given their association with a range of illness outcomes. Many of the policies and interventions aimed at changing health-related behaviours assume that people are more or less free to choose their behaviour and how they experience health. Within sociology and anthropology, these behaviours are viewed not as acts of choice but as actions and practices situated wit…
Ordinary Medicine
Choice and compassion at the end of life
Planning for an (un)certain future
Neoliberal policies are shaping the healthcare landscape by emphasizing individual choice. End-of-life care is a case in point as patient choice, through advance care planning, is a key conceptual framework for motivating service development and provision. Based on qualitative ethnographic research in England, this article describes what choice is and how it is enacted in the context of end-of-life care. Within policy, choice represents individua…
Placing death and dying
Over the last decade, policies in both the UK and many other countries have promoted the opportunity for patients at the end of life to be able to choose where to die. Central to this is the expectation that in most instances people would prefer to die at home, where they are more likely to feel most comfortable and less medicalised. In so doing, recording the preferred place of death and reducing the number of hospital deaths have become common …
Internalising ‘sensitivity’
Research about dying is viewed as inherently sensitive because of how death is perceived in many societies. Such framing assumes participants are ‘vulnerable’ and at risk of ‘harm’ from research. Simultaneously, with increasing recognition of the importance of reflexivity, researchers can become (deeply) preoccupied with their actions and experiences in the field. Whilst reflexivity is often described as a helpful process, in this paper we consid…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
"We come in as "the nothing
In our ethnographic study of palliative care in a UK medical setting, we concerned ourselves with instances when medical staff chose not do something, which we came to call 'noninterventions'. Such instances raised an obvious question: how does one study something that is not happening? In this Position Piece, we outline three ways in which we have tried to engage with this methodological question, from the initial grant application process to th…
Constructing denial as a disease object
As part of the general shift in contemporary healthcare from a focus on specific diseases to treating the whole person, doctors are now expected to be reflective and engage empathetically with patients. Yet, the context of end of life potentially confounds this commitment. Here we draw on the written submissions of UK medical students confronting dying patients to offer insight into a range of entangled issues. Although the exercise is designed t…
Not intervening as a form of care
Biomedicine is organized around interventions. Despite growing concern about overtreatment in healthcare systems, not intervening can still raise questions about potential negligence and the quality of care. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with palliative care teams in England, we explore the work palliative care specialists do to reduce and sometimes halt interventions for patients at the end-of-life, in a general medical environment that is lar…
Unpacking sensitive research
We are living in turbulent times. The hashtag #MeToo went viral in 2017; the death of George Floyd propelled the Black Lives Matter movement back into international headlines; and the emergence of COVID-19 has brought to the fore issues around illness, death, dying and bereavement, it seems that emotions and sensitivities are running high for many people, if not for everyone. In 2018, when we conceived this special issue, we noted in our proposal…
Dying
Alex Broom's new book on dying takes a sociological analysis to the end of life creating what he calls a ‘sociology of dying’ (p. 3). The book covers topics from communicating and managing transitions at the end of life, the normativity of the hospice, and the embodied experiences of dying. Throughout the text, Broom seeks to draw out different perspectives - those of the patient, family and carers, and the professionals - to describe end of life…
Applying social theory to understand health-related behaviours
Health-related behaviours are a concern for contemporary health policy and practice given their association with a range of illness outcomes. Many of the policies and interventions aimed at changing health-related behaviours assume that people are more or less free to choose their behaviour and how they experience health. Within sociology and anthropology, these behaviours are viewed not as acts of choice but as actions and practices situated wit…
Multidisciplinary team meetings
Multidisciplinary team meetings are part of the everyday working life of palliative care staff. Based on ethnographic material from community and hospital palliative care teams in England, this article examines these meetings as dynamic routines. Although intended to have a prescribed format to review deaths and collect standardised information to monitor service performance, in practice, the content and conduct of the meetings were fluid, reflec…
Grieving academic grant rejections
Bidding for research funding has increasingly become a main feature of academic work from the doctoral level and beyond. Individually and collectively, the process of grant writing - from idea conceptualisation to administration - involves considerable work, including emotional work in imagining possible futures in which the project is enacted. Competition and failure in grant capture are high, yet there is little discussion about how academics e…
The implications of Covid ‐19 on health and social care personnel in long‐term care facilities for older people
This scoping review mapped out the existing literature pertaining to health and social care personnel experiences during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and their work in a long-term care setting for older people. This review identified the gaps in the implications of health and social care personnel's own health and well-being during the pandemic as well as the ethical dilemmas inherent in providing care during the COVID-19 pand…
Human and Person When Life Is Fragile
In this paper, we focus on how medical staff care for people who are dying and on the increasing use of diverse technologies to ease the experience of dying. Because it is accepted patients cannot recover, the primary value to preserve life underpinning much of biomedical practice is contrasted by a commitment to make people's last period of life as fulfilling and meaningful as possible. Drawing on illustrative cases from an ethnography of pallia…
Standardising care of the dying
The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was a prominent set of guidance in the late 2000s and early 2010s within palliative and end-of-life care. Developed in England to improve the care of dying patients, it was later adopted in 20 counties. After a public scandal, it was removed from practice in England but remains in other locations, including the Netherlands. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data, from England and the Nether…
Rethinking end of life care
Images of hospices on social media
Social death in end-of-life care policy
Social death denotes a loss of personhood. The concept of social death is engaged with in English end-of-life care policy that sees social death before physical death as a problem. Policy-makers posit that dying persons are likely to be subject to a social death prior to their physical death unless they play an active and aware role in planning their death, facilitated through communication and access to services. Such a view foregrounds a vision…
Home Death
DDB 2012 Report for Journal of Illness, Crisis & Loss
Constructing denial as a disease object
As part of the general shift in contemporary healthcare from a focus on specific diseases to treating the whole person, doctors are now expected to be reflective and engage empathetically with patients. Yet, the context of end of life potentially confounds this commitment. Here we draw on the written submissions of UK medical students confronting dying patients to offer insight into a range of entangled issues. Although the exercise is designed t…
Social death in end-of-life care policy
Social death denotes a loss of personhood. The concept of social death is engaged with in English end-of-life care policy that sees social death before physical death as a problem. Policy-makers posit that dying persons are likely to be subject to a social death prior to their physical death unless they play an active and aware role in planning their death, facilitated through communication and access to services. Such a view foregrounds a vision…
Applying social theory to understand health-related behaviours
Health-related behaviours are a concern for contemporary health policy and practice given their association with a range of illness outcomes. Many of the policies and interventions aimed at changing health-related behaviours assume that people are more or less free to choose their behaviour and how they experience health. Within sociology and anthropology, these behaviours are viewed not as acts of choice but as actions and practices situated wit…
Being Mortal
As an anthropologist interested in end-of-life care, I wanted to read Gawande's best-selling Being Mortal to understand how a non-fiction book written for a populist audience about death could be s
Choice and compassion at the end of life
Planning for an (un)certain future
Neoliberal policies are shaping the healthcare landscape by emphasizing individual choice. End-of-life care is a case in point as patient choice, through advance care planning, is a key conceptual framework for motivating service development and provision. Based on qualitative ethnographic research in England, this article describes what choice is and how it is enacted in the context of end-of-life care. Within policy, choice represents individua…
Images of hospices on social media
Introduction
As early career researchers studying the end of life, we recognise that scholarly activity in the field of death studies – an umbrella term for research spanning all aspects of death, dying and ber
Dying
Alex Broom's new book on dying takes a sociological analysis to the end of life creating what he calls a ‘sociology of dying’ (p. 3). The book covers topics from communicating and managing transitions at the end of life, the normativity of the hospice, and the embodied experiences of dying. Throughout the text, Broom seeks to draw out different perspectives - those of the patient, family and carers, and the professionals - to describe end of life…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
Internalising ‘sensitivity’
Research about dying is viewed as inherently sensitive because of how death is perceived in many societies. Such framing assumes participants are ‘vulnerable’ and at risk of ‘harm’ from research. Simultaneously, with increasing recognition of the importance of reflexivity, researchers can become (deeply) preoccupied with their actions and experiences in the field. Whilst reflexivity is often described as a helpful process, in this paper we consid…
Unpacking sensitive research
We are living in turbulent times. The hashtag #MeToo went viral in 2017; the death of George Floyd propelled the Black Lives Matter movement back into international headlines; and the emergence of COVID-19 has brought to the fore issues around illness, death, dying and bereavement, it seems that emotions and sensitivities are running high for many people, if not for everyone. In 2018, when we conceived this special issue, we noted in our proposal…
"We come in as "the nothing
In our ethnographic study of palliative care in a UK medical setting, we concerned ourselves with instances when medical staff chose not do something, which we came to call 'noninterventions'. Such instances raised an obvious question: how does one study something that is not happening? In this Position Piece, we outline three ways in which we have tried to engage with this methodological question, from the initial grant application process to th…
Ways of ‘Being With’
Palliative care professionals often speak of the importance of forming meaningful relationships with patients and their families. Trust and rapport, usually established over extended periods of time through face-to-face interactions, and a ‘gentle honesty’ regarding end-of-life and death are key aspects of developing a sense of intimacy with people who are approaching the end of their lives. A fundamental feature of this intimacy is conveying a s…
Placing death and dying
Over the last decade, policies in both the UK and many other countries have promoted the opportunity for patients at the end of life to be able to choose where to die. Central to this is the expectation that in most instances people would prefer to die at home, where they are more likely to feel most comfortable and less medicalised. In so doing, recording the preferred place of death and reducing the number of hospital deaths have become common …
Rethinking end of life care
Unpacking Sensitive Research
Group-based Tai Chi as therapy for alleviating experiences of social death in people with advanced, incurable disease
Advanced, incurable disease is a highly stressful and traumatic life event that can lead to losses of social identity, social connectedness, and losses associated with bodily disintegration. The combination of these losses makes it difficult to remain socially active and sometimes results in experiences of social death. However, few studies have explored the role of group-based hospice activities for mitigating the impact of social death in peopl…
The implications of Covid ‐19 on health and social care personnel in long‐term care facilities for older people
This scoping review mapped out the existing literature pertaining to health and social care personnel experiences during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and their work in a long-term care setting for older people. This review identified the gaps in the implications of health and social care personnel's own health and well-being during the pandemic as well as the ethical dilemmas inherent in providing care during the COVID-19 pand…
Standardising care of the dying
The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was a prominent set of guidance in the late 2000s and early 2010s within palliative and end-of-life care. Developed in England to improve the care of dying patients, it was later adopted in 20 counties. After a public scandal, it was removed from practice in England but remains in other locations, including the Netherlands. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data, from England and the Nether…
Human and Person When Life Is Fragile
In this paper, we focus on how medical staff care for people who are dying and on the increasing use of diverse technologies to ease the experience of dying. Because it is accepted patients cannot recover, the primary value to preserve life underpinning much of biomedical practice is contrasted by a commitment to make people's last period of life as fulfilling and meaningful as possible. Drawing on illustrative cases from an ethnography of pallia…
Exploring the experiences of distance learning students being supported to resubmit a final assignment following a fail result
This study explores the experiences of five distance learners at a UK university who needed support to resubmit their final assignment following a fail result. Having received written feedback on the submission, we asked how this could be best delivered to inform and motivate a successful resubmission. Written feedback alone was found to be insufficient for these students to feel supported. There is a need also for a human connection to provide ‘…
British unpaid carers’ perspectives on what impacts their resilience when providing end-of-life care at home
Support from family or friends is fundamental to people dying at home. Understanding what impacts unpaid carer resilience is essential if services are to support them effectively. Seven databases were searched using a scoping review methodology. Delimiters included date, geographical area and language. A total of 647 articles were identified, with 11 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Most studies focused on coping strategies ( n = 9), not …
Sociology (23 obras) · Medicine (20 obras) · Psychology (19 obras) · Nursing (15 obras) · Palliative care (14 obras) · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues (14 obras) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (13 obras) · Political science (11 obras) · End-of-life care (10 obras) · Ethnography (10 obras)