GEKAP

Subjective conceptions of health and disease in home nursing - an empirical-ethical analysis (GEKAP Project)

University Medicine Greifswald

There is a growing number of people in need of long-term care. Simultaneously, the proportion of those receiving it by informal caregivers (e.g. spouse, children) and professional caregivers at home has increased.
It is well-known that perceptions of health and disease have significant consequences for individual persons and society: Social welfare is based on the recognition of disease and/or care dependency which qualify for services provided by long-term care insurance. However, only few studies so far have investigated the personal understandings of health and disease of those immediately affected and involved in the provision of long-term home nursing.
In the GEKAP project, semi-structured qualitative interviews with informal caregivers, professional caregivers and care-recipients in long-term home nursing arrangements are conducted in the Northeastern part of Germany. The interviews aim at capturing the participants’ lived experiences of receiving and practicing care at home, the impact of care dependency and their subjective understanding of health and disease. Furthermore, the interviews intend to explore the participants’ perceptions of the appropriateness of care. The empirical findings will be confronted with medico-theoretical concepts of health and disease. A special focus will lie on the normative-ethical implications of patient perspectives on health and disease, which can support the analysis of distributional justice and the realization of self-determination in home-care arrangements.

• Anna-H. Seidlein, M.Sc.: Anna-Henrikje.Seidlein@med.uni-greifswald.de
• Maresa Buchholz, M.Sc.: maresa.buchholz@uni-greifswald.de