Dying Worlds in Austria II: The Perspective of Professional Caregivers in Regular Care for "Good Dying"
Project Team: Alexander Lang, Elisabeth Frankus
Project Partners: Universität Wien – Institut für Pflegewissenschaften (project lead)
Project Duration: 2020-2021
Funding: Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), Anniversary Fund of the National Bank of Austria, project no 17075
Project Information: The aim is a co-construction of 'good dying' from the perspective of the different professions in regular care. The project will consider dying as a holistic process, focusing on the social construction of dying and the accompanying processes. Against the background of the increasing institutionalization of dying, the perspective of professional caregivers who work at the different places of dying and (co-)design these places gains in importance. The project pursues the question of what 'good dying' means for professional caregivers.
15 group discussions in institutions of regular care in different Austrian provinces will be conducted, evaluated and interpreted. We are planning to conduct three group discussions each in hospitals, nursing homes and home care, as well as contrasting groups in homeless assistance, in prisons, in assistance for the disabled and on the topic of sudden death with ambulance staff, police and fire brigade. In addition, we will conduct a literature search. With the help of the sociological discourse analysis of knowledge, we will analyze selected textbooks of the two most relevant professional groups, medicine and nursing, and investigate how the topics of death and dying are taught in basic training. Finally, the entire data corpus will be brought together in a dispositive analysis and interpreted in depth. The results of all previous steps will be discussed in an expert workshop with managers from the regular care sector and recommendations for action will be developed.