Medicine in older age - perception and assessment of aging processes by older people as well as medical and nursing professionals
Subproject 6 within the DFG Research Group (5022) "Medicine and the Time Structure of Good Life
The project "Medicine in Older Age - Perception and Assessment of Aging Processes by Older People and Medical and Nursing Professionals" is a subproject of the DFG research group "Medicine and the Time Structure of Good Life".
Project Goals
Against the background of increasing possibilities of modern medicine, the subproject investigates the care preferences of people in old age as well as the care priorities of medical and nursing professionals who treat older people. The underlying assumption is that the preference or rejection of medical treatments is influenced by individual and societal images of old age as well as by the awareness of the finiteness of life. Like older people themselves, professionals are shaped by societal images of age(ing) and associated notions of age-appropriate health that are subject to constant change.
Study design and methodology
By means of focus group discussions and supplementary individual interviews with older people as well as medical and nursing professionals, the subproject investigates the perception of aging processes and their evaluation in the area of tension between "trivialization" or "pathologization" as well as the resulting care preferences and priorities of these three groups. The results of the focus group and individual interviews serve within the research group to empirically substantiate the ethical discourses about ideas of a good life in time and especially about successful aging.
Participating institutions
- Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesemann, Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center Göttingen;
- Prof. Dr. Christoph Herrmann-Lingen, Department of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Göttingen;
- Prof. Dr. Holmer Steinfath, Chair of Philosophy with a focus on Practical Philosophy, University of Göttingen;
- Prof. Dr. Vera King, Professor of Sociology and Psychoanalytic Social Psychology, Institute of Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt and Sigmund Freud Institute;
- Prof. Dr. Mark Schweda, Department of Ethics in Medicine, University of Oldenburg;
- Prof. Dr. Claudia Stockinger, Dr. Christian Hißnauer, Institute for German Literature, Humboldt University Berlin
Project funding
German Research Foundation (funding period: 2021-2025)
Contact
contact information
- telephone: +49 551 3965302
- fax: +49 551 3929530
- e-mail address: evelyn.kleinert(at)med.uni-goettingen.de