[Palliative Care im Migrationskontext].

Abstract

Introduction: Palliative care in the migration context is mainly a diversity-sensitive treatment and care tailored to the individual person. In the case of serious advanced illness and especially at the end of life, people with a migration background have fundamentally similar basic needs as the rest of the population. They want to be as free as possible from pain and other distressing symptoms, and in the process of dying they want encouragement through their relatives and support from competent and committed health professionals with whom they can communicate in their native language whenever possible. A certain transcultural competence and experience in the care of people with a migration background makes it easier to understand values, wishes, but also worries and fears of the patients and their relatives and to meet their needs. The determining factor here is often not the cultural background from which they come, but their life and migration history, their education, their socioeconomic status and their position and role within the social environment. Discussions about the nature and prognosis of a serious illness should always be held with the affected person himself. Only if these discussions and the decision-making authority are delegated by the patient to a family member, indirect communication can be considered, whereby care must be taken to ensure that decisions are made in the interests of the patient and not the person making the decision by proxy.