1,720,957 research outputs found
The narratological approach in accompanying people towards the end of life: the experience of “Teatro DiLetto"
No full textBackground: The care of patients in the terminal phase of their lives requires a broader approach that encompasses emotional, psychological, relational, and spiritual support for the person. Methodology: This paper describes the “TeatroDiLetto”, a project aimed at exploring the possibility, for terminally ill patients, to express their experiences, stories, and emotions through various artistic forms, with the aim of promoting their emotional and psychological wellbeing and a better quality of care. The project involved three Italian associations dealing with healthcare support and a multidisciplinary group composed of: doctors, bioethicists, psychologists, therapists, and theatre actors. Training sessions were organised for the operators involved in the project, and individual interviews were conducted with all participants, before and after the artistic experience. Results and Discussion: Preliminary results suggest that the valorisation of patients’ narratives, life stories, memories, and wishes can have a significant impact on their well-being and on the quality of the operators’ professional performance, while fostering that sense of community and sharing among all those involved, which is the basis of any authentic care support process as well. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals should be prepared to interact with different humanities professionals, so that they might collaborate in the realisation of a personalised care project that is attentive to: the specific history of each subject, cultivating constant dialogue between knowledges, and drawing on a multiple and interactive panorama of competences
Ethics in Pet Funeral Practices: The State of Liminality
No full textSocial perceptions towards animals have, in recent decades, undergone important evolutions, towards a more inclusive view, focused on the recognition of the intrinsic value of all living forms. In this context, pet burial cemeteries are a testament to the human bond with the animal and the intensity of the emotional response that its breaking evokes, as well as an opportunity to reflect on, and improve, our understanding of the evolution of this extraordinary relationship. The most significant cultural and social changes on the subject will be highlighted in this article, through a historical overview of animal burial
Cremation and the ‘ethical’ handling of ashes
No full textSeveral new alternatives to traditional burial have emerged through the years, including the communal cinerary urn option which involves the cremation of the deceased and the burial of their ashes in a shared burial, often located in a dedicated site, such as a memorial garden or a cemetery. Understanding the motivations and ethical considerations, that guide people’s burial choices can offer valuable insights for both practitioners and those who are faced with making decisions regarding their own burial, or that of their loved ones. This study aims to examine funeral rites and the concept of the communal cinerary urn exploring, through interviews conducted with family members of people who have chosen this option, the personal, cultural, economic, and spiritual motivations that led them to opt for this form of burial, while also analysing the ethical concerns and emotions associated with this choice, including feelings of loss, respect, and remembrance
The “Doula” in accompanying the end-of-life
No full textSince time immemorial, the occurrence of death and adjoined burial ceremonies have been at the core of critical anthropological challenges that have depicted and proved the social-cultural value of this topic moment throughout the ages. Recently, several social factors, along with the development of biomedical techniques and the increasing medicalization of man in his life course, have changed the appearance of death. In the industrialized and urbanized areas of contemporary society, death has progressively shed the ‘naturalness’ of a difficult moment that always has concerned the inner circle of family, to further has been frequently relegated to medical or, at least medicalized, context in which the demise takes place long gone from the gazes and affections of kin and beloved ones. Against a context in which the medical technique becomes increasingly intrusive, the innermost anguish of the dying individual is consumed: that of being abandoned to a solitary confrontation with life’s most tormented event, at a time when according to medical science “there is nothing left to act”. Therefore, these contingencies oblige contemporary bio-medical ethics to rethink the moral and accompanying rules at the end of life that validly regulated this arena in the past, but which at present appear outdated and insufficient. To this end, the authors analyze the figure of the “End-of-Life Doula”, a figure who can intercept the social need revolving around the subject of death, by offering the dying person and family members support, comfort, and a meaningful response to the ordeal of death
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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