Investigation of the visual communication culture within Palliative Care

A growing interest in the end of life, dying and death can currently be observed in society. Experiences with incurable diseases and with professional end-of-life  support  through  palliative  care  are  being  discussed in the media and are becoming the focus of various research directions. With the applied research project “Settings of Dying”, nine researchers are combining previously separate specialist perspectives for an innovative, interdisciplinary approach.

In cooperation with a practice partner, the Centre for Palliative Care at the City Hospital Waid Zurich, the last phase of life of terminally ill patients is being investigated with regard to four basic components: language; nursing care; product design and visual communication; religion.

Dealing with these items provides insights into personal styles of dying, and the design of the items allows conclusions to be drawn about institutional self-images of palliative care. The procedure is based on the following questions: What kind of scripts can be identified in the visual design practices, what (pre-)assumptions underlie them, what institutional self-images materialize in the current means of communication? The aim is to work out the scripts of visual design elements and to test new design drafts in order to further explore the scope of these visual design elements in the research field.

The central object of investigation are institutional means of communication, which serve internal and external communication: Brochures, elements of signage such as signs and inscriptions or guidelines for entrance talks. In a first step, the collection of materials and data is carried out at the practice partner’s premises. Communication materials from the field of palliative care and related fields such as nutritional counselling, social services, acute geriatrics and oncology of  the City  Hospital of Waid are collected. Websites and blogs as well as information and advertising material from related institutions such as care centres are also used for the study. In addition, the visual communication culture of information events, conferences and trade fairs of the Palliative Analyse Care.

The procedure includes guideline-based interviews with communication managers of the Center for Palliative Care as well as rhetorical design analysis of the documents (see Scheuermann 2017). This will also include research on practices and scripts from the other perspectives: How do the ways of speaking about death or spiritual considerations affect visual communication? How does visual communication relate to linguistically formulated models of palliative care?  Subsequent prototyping will determine the extent to which institutional means of communication could be adapted to palliative care in the future.