People with advanced cancer and their care givers in conflict over food

Hopkinson, Jane B. (2007) People with advanced cancer and their care givers in conflict over food. 10th European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) Congress, Budapest, Hungary. 07 - 09 Jun 2007.

Abstract

Aim: This paper is the first to discuss ways of helping people with advanced cancer and their care givers manage eating related conflict 1.
Method: The research was a mixed methods investigation of weight loss and eating difficulties in people with advanced cancer. The study participants included 32 patient-caregiver pairs receiving palliative home care in the South of England in either 2003 or 2005. Methods of data collection included semistructured interviews that were analysed using both content and thematic approaches. An emergent theme was ‘conflict’.
Findings: Conflict over food had arisen between 26 of the patient-caregiver pairs. Some patients had found ways of self-managing the conflict, revealing potential for a supportive intervention. The evidence of self-management was synthesized with the emerging literature on collective coping 2, generating a new perspective from which to approach the conflict problem.
Conclusions: Further work is needed to understand the process through which some patientcarer dyads effectively manage conflict over food. This understanding would provide an evidence base for building a complex intervention for the problem.

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