Research project
End-of-life Decision-Making
Studies on the improvement of cultural conditions of dying in Germany
The question of how to deal with dying persons affects society in its innermost. The hospice-movement and palliative medicine indicate that there is a great demand for institutions and methods that enable people to die in dignity, and for the right of self-determination at the end of life. Interdisciplinary scientific reflection of hospice care is the indispensible prerequisite to establish aims, criteria, norms and structures that ensure the best possible care for dying persons.
The chair of Moral Theology in cooperation with the Institute of Medical Ethics and the History of Medicine (Prof. Dr. J. Vollmann), established a two-year joint research project, provided by third-party funds from the supporters’ society of the Lukas Hospice in Herne and its director, Prof. Dr. A. Sturm. The objective is to scientifically clarify questions concerning the end-of-life decision-making in a way that both hospice care in practice and persons at the end of life would benefit from the results.
Our modern society is distinguished by an overall speechlessness towards and tabooisation of death and dying. The causes stem from a general ignorance concerning the different forms of death and manifold fears of the dying process. The lack of knowledge, on the one hand, leads to a deficit when it comes to the medical care of dying persons; on the other hand, it prevents a personal confrontation and adequate preparation for this last phase of life. The development over the past years has proved that a dignified process of dying, which is free of symptoms, can be enabled through specialist knowledge and without unwanted life-prolonging measures or active euthanasia. The project is committed to elaborating such knowledge.
It also aims to organize scientific conferences in cooperation with the Institute of Medical Ethics and the History of Medicine; the respective presentations will be published subsequently.
Until 2009, the project was supervised by Dr. med. Sabine Salloch, since 2010 Dr. phil. Andreas Walker is in charge of the project’s continuation.