Text

theses

As individuals approach end-of-life, they and their families and other caregivers may be especially vulnerable to experiencing psychosocial stressors that can negatively affect psychological wellbeing. A growing body of evidence suggests that there are numerous benefits to providing psychosocial care to all these individuals as they confront end-of-life care and end-of-life. Importantly, clinical psychologists are qualified for, well suited to, and add value to such end-of-life psychosocial care. They can intervene before the onset of illness; after an illness is diagnosed and treatment has been initiated; during advanced illness and the dying process; and after the death of the patient with grieving family and survivors. Despite the ways that clinical psychologists are particularly well-equipped to engage professionally with end-of-life care, they are still relatively rare members of and not generally perceived of as central to end-of-life care treatment teams. In light of this professional gap highlighting clinical psychologists' absence in end-of-life care, the present study seeks (a) to document the valuable roles, practices, and functions of clinical psychologists now actually working in end-of-life care settings, and (b) to understand the ways in which these professionals cultivate meaning in this highly stressful work to sustain themselves. Towards this end, in this dissertation, I first provide a review of the current literature describing psychology's relationship with death and dying, psychology's role at end-of-life, psychosocial treatment at end-of-life, and meaning-making. Then, I describe the qualitative study methodology I used to conduct semi-structured interviews with clinical psychologists now practicing in end-of-life care settings to capture the range and depth of the participants' relevant experiences. The interviews were both (a) analyzed individually as narrative case studies in order to identify the variety of practices and experiences among the subjects; and (b) compared and contrasted with each other to highlight common themes found across individual cases. I end with a discussion of the implications of this study, including directions for future research and implications for clinical practice.

ETD_11014

Psy.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-1yn3-p040

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.