"It's Our Honor to to Walk Them Through This Journey" : Hospice Workers and How They Conceptualize Their Work and the Dying Process

This research aims to understand how hospice workers conceptualize their jobs and the dying process in a death phobic society, and a medical field where extending life is almost always the primary goal. I used Everett Hughes; theory of dirty work to examine how hospice employees construct meaning of their occupations. I conducted 10 in-depth face-to-face interviews with certified nursing assistants, nurses, physician assistants, social workers, and administrators. I found that that these hospice workers contextualize their work as being more rewarding than other areas of treatment through a patient driven practice that empowers the dying to have agency over their end-of-life experiences. They also frame their work as either a calling or a natural ability, seeing their work as an honor and a source of insight into both life and death.