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- Ferrer Mariné, Julio, 1944-
(author)
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I väntan på döden : en etnologisk undersökning av åldringarnas situation på en långvårdsavdelning (1976-1977)
- 1981
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- 1977 I was employed as a nurse attendant in the ward for long-term nursing in Betania Hospital in Stockholm, in orter to study through participating observation, the various social process that occured in that ward. The purpose of my study was to find out in an empirical way what happens when a person is nearing death and how the problem of euthanasia is solved in practice in a Swedish hospital. Sixteen patients were selected for a detailed description of their situation in the ward. The patients' near environment were analyzed, the limitations and technical and hygienical problems in the ward, the stressed working pace and the constant shortage of personnel, the working routines in the hospital and how the different rooms in the ward were used for sorting the patients into two main categories: "réhabilitable" and "incurable". The classification in the ward and the staff's way of acting clearly showed that the treatment given to a patient was in reality determined by his social value. Euthanasia in the ward was a matter of deliberation. Patients who asked for it would obtain euthanasia if they were capable of verbalizing their decision without making the staff anxious. In practice the staff tried to support the patients life until the situation was felt to be meaningless and distressing. Since the staff lacked norms for dealing with euthanasia, their anxiety cristallized into supranormal experiences (hallucinations) with normative function. Society lacks guiding principles that might serve as etablished norms for the care of dying people. The personnel lacked a repertoire of responses to the social and psychical needs of the dying patients and reacted with indifference, confusion and uneasiness.
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