L’hôpital comme espace liminal d'expériences de service de soins pour les patients âgés

This research aims to explore a life transition related to the physical degradation experienced by elderly people who integrate the hospital viewed as a liminal space, that remains largely unstudied in the literature on services. Through a qualitative study carried out with 17 patients of a geriatric service, we bring to light two types of transition experiences of care lived in the hospital: on the one hand, experiences of care associating the hospital with a dystopic non-place revealing loneliness in the face of vulnerability, and on the other hand, experiences of care associating the liminal space of the hospital with a heterotopic non-place embodying security and good management of the dysfunction of bodies. These experiences of care services go hand in hand with differentiated ways of managing the transition through this liminal space consisting either of: (a) reintroducing normality into a disruptive liminal space in order to make it livable for the time of the transition; or (b) voluntarily divesting themselves of this management, sometimes with fatalism, to delegate it to the hospital organization and its staff, thus contributing to the emergence of a dilatory liminality, which stretches out in time.