Fin de vie et temps ultime : qu'en disent les malades ?

“How long do you think I have left, doctor?” Based on this question from patients approaching the end of their lives, we have explored this period of time by conducting interviews with hospitalised patients in palliative care units. The principle idea was to qualitatively analyse this period from their experiences. Against a backdrop of homogeneity emerges considerable heterogeneity: there is great variability expressed not only in the remarks but also according to different times of the day. This duality resonates with the anthropological and philosophical foundations of man and also echoes the uncertain nature of our lives: if time is running out, the conditions are uncertain, which thus initiates a process of reflection. Patients recount that not suffering and maintaining strong personal relationships allow them to find meaning in this period of life; the challenge facing caregivers must therefore be to reflect on the very notion of caregiving. It is a matter of circumventing the pendulum of caregiving, from one extreme - biomedical - to the other - support - and reinitiating reflection on the relationship between technique and “humanity” in practices. Finally, patients expressed a temporality in the present that is connected to the past and looks toward the future. Thus, by developing a story, the subject reclaims a “narrative identity”: a singularity tied to the caregiver relationship that finds its way daily, according to ethics based on unresolved questions and between boundaries of knowledge and power, until the last breath of life.