Lived Experiences of Cancer Patients from Death Anxiety Based on Jaspers Borderline Situations

Introduction Each of the schools of thought, philosophy and religion has different views on death and its treatment. One of the most common problems of cancer patients challenging with even after the end of the treatment is the anxiety of death. The purpose of this study is investigating lived experiences of patients challenging with cancer, who were hospitalized in Baqiyatollah hospital in Tehran. Methods: This research is qualitative approach and interpretative phenomenological method. The sample of study was 20 volunteer patients of Cancer department of Baqiatollah hospital, who were selected by the purposive sampling. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviews continued until saturation of the data. After recording and writing the content of interviews, interviews were analyzed based on Dickelman, Tanner and Ellen (1989) method. Results: From the analysis of the patients' lived experiences of cancer, 4 main themes appeared: the concept of death in patients’ attitude, the disease outcomes, the causes of death anxiety and factors reducing death anxiety and also 23 sub-themes were found. Conclusions: Based on the findings, it can be concluded that a Comprehensive care plan should be developed to reduce the death anxiety of life of cancer patients at the borderline position.