[Dignity in the care of terminal ill and dying patients. Definitions and supportive interventions in palliative care].

Most patients, family members, health care professional as well as volunteers would agree that dignified care and being allowed to die with dignity are superior and unquestionable goals of palliative care. Although the majority of people have a more or less vague concept of dignity and despite its significance for palliative care, only a few empirical approaches to describe the sense of dignity from patients' and health care professionals' perspectives have been undertaken. However, individual descriptions of the dignity concept and definitions can serve as an impetus to improve the current palliative care practice by the development and evaluation of psychotherapeutic interventions for patients near the end of life and the allocation of resources.

[Education in palliative care. An overview].

In recent years, the development of new educational concepts in palliative care was necessary due to (1) the growing number of institutions providing palliative care, (2) the introduction of the supplementary term palliative medicine and (3) the integration of palliative care modules in other educational programs in medicine and nursing. Already in the 1990s, dedicated professional societies devised learning target and objective catalogues that are widely acknowledged. In German law, these developments became visible with the introduction of the medical degree 'palliative medicine' in 2003 as well in the nursing law of 2004, where palliative care became part of all nursing education.