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Issue of death and dying through eyes of workers in hospice facilities
PLIČŽKOVÁ, Iva
The theoretical part of the bachelor thesis describes the basic theme of death and dying in order to support the practical part as best as possible. The first chapter covers the topic of death and dying in general. Besides the basic definitions it contains the phases of dying according to Kübler-Ross, the topic of suffering in human life and the taboo of death. An inseparable part of the thesis is an excursion into the history of the perception of death. The end of the first chapter deals with the current state of dying in the Czech Republic. The second chapter deals with palliative care and the hospice movement. The chapter provides a basic division, mission and goals, and of course the topic of euthanasia is also mentioned here. The last chapter briefly describes the burnout syndrome among helping professions including hospice workers. The practical part begins by defining the goal of this thesis. The goal of this thesis is as follows: To map the opinions and attitudes of helping workers in hospices in context to their perception of death suffering and the factors that influence them. To achieve this goal four research questions have been established and subsequently answered during the research. Because of the nature of the thesis the qualitative research method has been chosen. Both individual and group semi-structured interviews have been chosen as the methods for gathering data. The communicational partners for the research were 11 hospice workers from the Jihočeský and Vysočina regions. Three areas emerged from the interviews: The reason for choosing this thesis in the palliative area; the perception of death, dying and suffering, and the prevention of the burnout syndrome. The reasons why somebody would choose to work in a hospice are very varied. The mentioned reasons included the experience of losing a loved one, coincidences when looking for work or transfers from hospital workers. As a clear positive the respondents mentioned a great difference between the quality of service offered by hospices against the quality offered by hospitals. In regards to the respondents opinions on death, most of the respondents consider death as a natural part of life, the possibility of an afterlife has however also been mentioned. A death of a young person or a child is a notable stress factor for all of the respondents. The most complicated area was the purpose of suffering where the respondents gave no clear answer. In regards to euthanasia the majority of the respondents were against legalizing it, mostly because of the quality and expanding palliative care. Another topic covered by the interviews was the presence of the child when someone is dying, the taboo of death or the influence of religion on working in this field. The last part of the practical part dealt with the strategies the workers in palliative care use to deal with work related stress and how do they prevent being burnout. Teambuilding had a positive feedback. The individual methods of preventing burnout then included nature, culture, talking to friends and especially strictly separating personal life and work.
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