Caring Cultures in end-of-life care

Telling about caring cultures in end-of-life care. Students and citizen scientists doing intercultural and intergenerational research

Care refers to a practice of mindfulness and stands for a fundamental belief put into practice, for caring activities and attentive affection. In a broad, political and political science understanding, “care” refers to a policy that organizations, communities or even society as a whole can and should follow. “Care cultures” are cultures of social systems, i.e., families, teams, organizations, or communities that strive to care for vulnerable people. The focus is on promoting social and organizational conditions that make good care possible.

Many students in training for nursing professions encounter dying people for the first time during their first internships. They are not always well prepared for the emotional impact that dying, death and bereavement can have on them. The project has created a space where students can share and reflect on their experiences. This was achieved in 13 intergenerational and intercultural storytelling cafés, in focus groups and in qualitative interviews. The stories were told together with people with dementia and elderly people as citizen scientists.

Pupils from the partner school, specializing in social care and elderly care, and students from the Bachelor's program in Applied Nursing Science helped prepare the storytelling cafés, participated in them, and co-moderated them. The storytelling cafés were recorded on digital audio media, transcribed verbatim, and partially analyzed in cooperation between researchers and students. In this way, the project was able to generate innovative knowledge about storytelling cafés as a research method.

The project has produced several transfer products, including a guide to conducting “storytelling cafés on end-of-life stories,” a themed booklet entitled “Eight short stories about the end of life,” instructions for the thematic analysis of qualitative data, and a short film entitled “SoKuL. Stroytelling Cafés for caring cultures about the end of life” with contributions from students and citizen scientists. The material is available for use in teaching and for the interested public. Numerous scientific publications and conference contributions have been produced for the scientific dissemination of the project results. A cumulative dissertation is currently being worked on.

This project is already completed.