Workshop on ‘Metaphor in end of life care’ at St Joseph’s Hospice, London

On 26th September 2014, three members of the CASS-affiliated ‘Metaphor in end of life care’ project team were invited to run a workshop at St Joseph’s Hospice in London. The workshop was attended by 27 participants, including clinical staff, non-clinical staff and volunteers.

Veronika Koller (Lancaster University) introduced the project, including its background, rationale, research questions, data and use of corpus methods in combination with qualitative analysis. Zsófia Demjén (The Open University) and Elena Semino (Lancaster University) presented the findings from the project that are particularly relevant to communication between healthcare professionals and patients nearing the end of their lives. These findings include: how patients diagnosed with terminal cancer use Violence and Journey metaphors to talk about their experiences of illness and treatment; and how patients and healthcare professionals use a variety of metaphors to talk about their mutual relationships. The project team pointed out the different ‘framings’ provided by different uses of metaphor, particularly in terms of the empowerment and disempowerment of patients. They provided evidence that no metaphor is inherently good or bad for all patients, but rather suggested that different metaphors work differently for different people, or even for the same person at different times. In the final session, Veronika Koller introduced the ‘Metaphor Menu’ – a collection of metaphors used by cancer sufferers, which the team are planning to pilot as a resource for newly-diagnosed patients.

A lively discussion followed each presentation, with many members of the audience asking questions and contributing their personal and professional experiences. The workshop received very positive evaluations in anonymous feedback questionnaires: 83% of participants rated the session at 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale (where 1 corresponds to ‘Very poor’ and 5 to ‘Excellent’). Comments included: Very interesting research & resonated with my experience. Food for thought!’ and ‘Will help with my area of care, will help me understand and think about what my patients and relatives are actually telling me. Will make me reflect and respond more appropriately’.