Editing Terminal illness (section)

== Communicating terminal status ==
Most terminally ill people are not distressed by being told that they are likely to die sooner rather than later,<ref name=":0" /> and they usually value knowing whether their realistic lifespan is likely to be "weeks", "months", or "years", even if more specific estimates are unavailable.<ref name=":1" />  However, many healthcare providers avoid telling them this because the healthcare providers are uncomfortable with death or perceive it as a professional failure.<ref name=":0" />  To avoid admitting that the person will inevitably die from an incurable condition, they may withhold information or, if pressed, give overly optimistic answers.<ref name=":0" />  For example, if the typical person in that situation usually lives for two to six months, they may say only the larger number.  They may rationalize the inflated claim by thinking of hopeful possibilities, such as an unproven treatment (which might shorten the person's life even further<ref name=":0" />) being attempted, or because they know that life expectancy is an imperfect estimate and could be both shorter or longer than expected.<ref name=":1" />

They may feel pressure from family members to give pleasant news or to preserve the false appearance of [[hope]].<ref name=":0" />  They often want to avoid the emotional outbursts that are associated with people understanding the medical situation accurately.<ref name=":0" />  For example, they will use death-denying language such as "She has a life-limiting diagnosis" – a term that makes the inevitable death seem less inevitable<ref>{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Lorraine |title=Understanding the Life Course: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives |date=2010-11-22 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-7456-4015-0 |pages=211 |language=en |quote=We continually use euphemisms to talk about death...Terms like 'terminal illness' have also been replaced by more uncertain terms like 'life limiting' or 'life threatening' illness, which make death seem more uncertain...}}</ref> – rather than bluntly saying "No matter what we do, your daughter is almost certainly going to die from this cancer, probably within the next few months."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nicol |first1=Jane |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-k8lDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22life-limiting%22+%22euphemism%22&pg=PT38 |title=Palliative and End of Life Care in Nursing |last2=Nyatanga |first2=Brian |date=2017-06-05 |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |isbn=978-1-5264-1552-3 |at= |language=en |chapter=The Role of Euphemisms}}</ref>