Symposium on compassionate care and the dying experience. Hope: its spheres and dimensions.

The phenomenon of hope has been described according to spheres and dimensions. The two spheres and six dimensions of hope, deduced from interviews and observations of elderly patients with cancer and tested on another population, serve as a theoretical model for understanding the complex nature of hope. They provide a perspective for assessing hope and for therapeutically influencing hope in persons during the last phases of life and in their families. Analysis of data suggests hope is a multidimensional, dynamic life force rather than trait-oriented and unidimensional. Therefore, there is always hope. The nursing challenge is to understand how hope may be operative, in order to facilitate and support this indispensable resource throughout the illness experience, but perhaps most importantly, during the last phase of a person's life.