Health Professional Responses to Deathbed Phenomena: Implications for medical knowledge and care

People often experience meaningful dreams and visions in the last days of their life. Healthcare professionals who work with dying patients acknowledge these events, even using them to predict when someone is likely to die. However the content of these experiences tend to be dismissed as unreal. This can create a disconnect with patients / families who often find them emotionally and spiritually valuable. Does this disconnect affect the ability of healthworkers to effectively care for patients in such moments? Arguably if something is not real, it does not matter and things that do not matter do not require care. Through working in a hospice and interviewing health professionals my project will explore whether this is the case or whether nurses, doctors and other staff do take these experiences seriously. If so, what are the consequences for how we understand what matters and what does not in medicine more broadly?