The purpose of our master's thesis was to learn how individual research participants experience being present during an illness and death of their loved one. We were interested in the companion's relationship with the dying before the experience of accompanying them, during the illness and after the death of a loved one. When researching the experience of illness, dying and death, we focused on the key insights on life, interpersonal relationships, and death that individual participants gained from the experience in question.
In the theoretical part of the paper, we first discussed death as a natural and certain part of life, the feeling of fear it awakens and the attitude towards death. We focused on the confrontation with death within the general and the professional public in Western society. After that, we presented the process of accompanying the dying based on three levels: the process of dying, care for the dying and their needs and the companion of the dying, who enters the monitoring process with certain characteristics, qualities, knowledge and skills. In the context of death, we could not ignore the grieving process, its phases and stages, and the factors that affect an individual’s grieving process. Since the reconstruction of meaning is supposed to play a key role in the grieving process, we also talked about the creation of meaning and post-traumatic growth in the field of life, interpersonal relationships and death.
In the empirical part of the paper, we presented the results of a qualitative research involving eight participants. Data were obtained through a semi-structured interview, prepared in advance. The experiences of the participants were analysed using a phenomenological method. Based on the obtained results, we exposed six areas: experiencing the process of accompanying the ill and dying, experiencing the relationship between the companion and the dying, experiencing the patient and the dying, experiencing the illness and death, experiencing the insights of the companion of the ill and dying, experiencing the health system.
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