A stay in Switzerland to understand the dying experience of patients with advanced disease

Alazne Belar, researcher of the ATLANTES Global Observatory of Palliative Care of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, has spent four months at the University Hospital Center of Vaud (Switzerland). In particular, she has been trained with the team of research on palliative care.

The researcher worked with Phil Larkin, Ph.D., PhD, a former president of the association European Palliative Care Association. "My goal was to analyze the data obtained from interviews with people with advanced illnesses in order to perform a qualitative analysis," she says. 

Qualitative part of the project

The topic of her stay is related to her doctoral thesis , which she defended in 2019 at the ICS. She developed it in the framework of the project "Dignity and wishes to die in patients with advanced disease", co-financed by the high school de Salud Carlos III -Subdirección General de assessment y Fomento de la research and the European Regional development Fund (ERDF)."

Alazne Belar focused on the experience of wanting to die that some patients with advanced diseases develop. Thus, in her doctorate she collected data from them and from the health professionals who cared for them. As she explains, she is currently focusing on qualitative aspects "to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of wanting to die". 

He says that the stay has also helped him to strengthen relationships with colleagues from other universities and to learn about the work that other teams carry out on the same topic, but from other perspectives. "Observing and learning from different methodologies is very stimulating," he says. 

She also highlights that the process of belonging to a different research team in a country with a strong sociological component, as far as palliative care is concerned, has given her new perspectives and impressions on how to continue to approach her research field.