Mourir en institution pour personnes âgées

In Switzerland, the adult protection right provides a binding power to advance directives. In consequence, there is normative promotion for the establishment of advance directives for each new resident in nursing homes. Based on the narratives of nurses on the way they collect the wishes of dying persons in nursing homes in Vaud Canton, we show that the value of support care at end of life lies in the establishment of a communication with the residents and with their relatives, launched by the efforts to record all the concerned persons’ wishes. At the interface between the healthcare and the social fields, our study acknowledges the nurses’ capacity to gather the concerned actors and, thus, to re-socialise death and dying. Healthcare teams fulfil a crucial role in fostering death, which contrasts with the previous individual and intra-familial approach