[“I want to die” – dealing with suicidal wishes in primary palliative care]

Abstract

Different attitudes towards, and ideas about the end of life, represent an often experienced challenge in palliative care provided by family doctors. If values diverge too strongly, considerable strain can originate from it for the health care professionals, in particular if it is about assisted suicide. How do family doctors experience the incompatibility between patients’ wishes and personal values? How do they succeed to bridge value divergences? Based on group discussions with family doctors in Switzerland the contribution focusses on these questions and identifies different strategies of family doctors. The results indicate that in particular ’convergence of perspectives’ with patients can reduce the strain for family doctors and can at the same time guarantee high quality of care.