"Calendarium Vitae" for Hospice Patients and their Caregivers: A Pilot Study

Kate Rygiel

A chapter in Clinical Trials in Vulnerable Populations from IntechOpen

Abstract: Although palliative care is designed to provide holistic comfort care and support, several patients still experience loss of purpose in life, and suffer from distress, sadness, anxiety, or decreased quality of life (QoL). To address these unmet needs, novel interventions, focused on psychosocial sources of distress, in hospice patients are needed. One such intervention is dignity therapy (DT), defined as a brief, individualized psychotherapy, applied for the purpose of relieving psychological distress at the end of life. "Calendarium Vitae" (CV) as a form of DT represents a feasible, safe, and effective, patient-friendly approach, targeting end-of-life psychological issues. In particular, DT can alleviate suffering and distress, help preserve psychophysical integrity, and support caregivers, during the bereavement period. This pilot study is designed to collect preliminary data, prior to conducting a larger randomized controlled trial (RCT) that will investigate the correlations of DT intervention with QoL, and possible reduction of distress and suffering, in the Eastern and Central European hospice patients (and their caregivers). Since DT is unknown in this part of Europe, the proposed pilot study, followed by RCT, will be the first step on the way to explore the DT intervention in research, among the vulnerable hospice patient population.

Keywords: hospice; terminal disease; palliative care; distress; suffering; coping strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/56582 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:118941

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.70190

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().