Project Details
Projekt
Subproject C (Psychocardiology) – Continuities and temporal breaks – Time aspects of good life for heart patients from a generativity and gender perspective
Applicants
Dr. Daniel Broschmann; Professor Dr. Christoph Herrmann-Lingen; Professor Dr. Matthias Rose
Subject Area
Practical Philosophy
Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424883170
The aim of the second funding period is to deepen the temporal understanding of Good Life for heart patients by addressing aspects of generativity and gender. The psychocardiological subproject builds on both the results of the first funding period and our own preliminary work on the phenomenology of corporeality, temporality, self-determination, and quality of life in health and illness: In the first funding period, it was shown that patients with severe heart disease perceive the illness as a deeply unsettling turning point in their own lives where they are dependent on medical and emotional help. Coping with a serious heart condition leads to confrontation with death and mortality as well as a need for supportive relationships and self-care. In dealing with the heart disease, aspects of post-traumatic growth are also reported over the further course of the illness. In the post-acute phase, a greater awareness of one's own finiteness and gratitude for being able to live on thanks to the (medical and emotional) care experienced lead to the desire to be able to give something back. With the increased subjective importance of close relationships, a need for reciprocation (“Gegengabe”) and passing on (“Weitergabe”) arises, in which aspects of generativity are already hinted at. These forms of generativity in a general sense (cultural, institutional) as well as mid-life (reproduction and parenthood) and late-life generativity (grandparenthood, old age) and their absence are to be examined in patients with heart disease. In the planned qualitative interviews and focus groups, the topic is to be explored in greater depth, particularly from a gender perspective, as has long been called for in cardiovascular medicine: i.e. the consideration of sex and gender in questions of a good life with heart disease. A paradigmatic example is the situation of a female patient with a congenital heart defect, whose desire to have children (or the decision for or against pregnancy) must be made against the background of a potential threat to the life of the mother and/or child. Finally, the qualitative results from the first and second funding periods are to be incorporated into the development of an innovative instrument to assess a more broadly understood concept of quality of life in medical practice.
DFG Programme
Research Units
