Stefanie Eicher

University of Zurich | UZH · Center for Gerontology

Background The Mini Suffering State Examination (MSSE) has been explicitly recommended to assess suffering in dementia patients. This study aimed to develop a German version of the MSSE and assess its psychometric properties involving people with advanced dementia (PAD) in a nursing home setting. Methods The MSSE was translated into German, and 95...

Background The Mini Suffering State Examination (MSSE) has been explicitly recommended to assess suffering in dementia patients. This study aimed to develop a German version of the MSSE and assess its psychometric properties involving people with advanced dementia (PAD) in a nursing home setting. Methods The MSSE was translated into German, and 95...

Background: Assisted dying and continuous deep sedation (CDS) are controversial practices. Little is known about the perceptions of physicians and surrogates about these practices for patients with advanced dementia. Objectives: To describe and compare physician and surrogate agreement with the use of assisted dying and CDS in advanced dementia....

Background: fact Boxes are decision support tools that can inform about treatment effects. Objectives: to test whether Fact Box decision support tools impacted decisional conflict, knowledge and preferences about the use of antibiotics and artificial hydration in advanced dementia. Design: randomized controlled trial. Setting: Swiss-German r...

In 10 volumes, jointly developed by relatives, practitioners, and researchers, information and guidance for relatives of persons with dementia at the end of life. 10 volumes on (1) Quality of life, (2) communication, (3) eating and drinking, (4) Health, (5) challenging behaviors, (6) spirituality, (7) legal and financial issues, (8) dying, (9) work...

Advanced dementia is a terminal condition. Foregoing burdensome interventions such as artificial nutrition or admission to hospital at the end of life is part of high-quality palliative care. In advanced, decisions regarding such interventions are made by health care proxies (HCPs). Different attitudes in HPCs and nurses regarding burdensome interv...

About two-thirds of people with dementia die from pneumonia and one-third from dehydration. The DemFACTS study aimed to develop and test decision supports called fact boxes, in order to inform decision-makers, who have to make burdensome treatment decisions at the end-of-life of people with dementia and either pneumonia or insufficient fluid intake...

Background The proportion of older people with advanced dementia who will die in nursing homes is constantly growing. However, little is known about the dying phase, the type of symptoms, the management of symptoms and the quality of life and dying in people with advanced dementia. The ZULIDAD (Zurich Life and Death with Advanced Dementia) study ai...

- Einführung - Gründe für die Anwendung partizipativer Forschungsmethoden - Diskussion - Fazit und Ausblick - Literatur

Abstract Current health-psychological theories and research mainly cover improvement of health, recovery from illness or maintenance of health. With this theoretical manuscript, we argue that in ageing societies in which chronic illness and multimorbidity become the norm rather than the exception, this focus of health psychology is no longer suffic...

Quality of life (QOL) is increasingly being suggested as a crucial outcome variable for interventions that aim to maintain or improve health and psychological resources in old age. Currently, two main approaches to measuring QOL can be distinguished: (1) the sQOL approach which measures an individual’s subjective evaluation of his or her overall li...

Quality of life (QOL) is increasingly being suggested as a crucial outcome variable for interventions that aim to maintain or improve health and psychological resources in old age. Currently, two main approaches to measuring QOL can be distinguished: (1) the sQOL approach which measures an individual’s subjective evaluation of his or her overall li...