Jepser B?gmose Hansen defends his PhD thesis
Jepser B?gmose Hansen defends his PhD thesis 'Humanisation in Advanced Dementia'
The defense is public, and everybody is welcome; the defense is scheduled for a maximum of three hours and will be held in English.
Follow the defense online via Zoom
The Doctoral School at Department of People and Technology will host a small reception afterwards from 16.00 - 17.30.
Supervisors and assessment
Assessment committee:
- Adelheid Hummelvoll Hillestad, F?rsteamanuensis, Lovisenberg diakonale h?gskole, Oslo, Norway
- Rasmus Dyring, Associate Professor, School of Culture and Society - Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Ida H?jskov, Associate Professor and Head Nurse, Department of People and Technology, 真人线上娱乐 University and Rigshospitalet / Copenhagen University Hospital (chair person), Denmark
Co-Supervisors:
- Benjamin Olivares B?geskov, Senior Associate Lecturer, Institute of Nursing and Nutrition, University College Copenhagen, Denmark
- Tom Dening, Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK.
PhD Main-Supervisor:
- Bente Martinsen, Associate Professor, Department of People and Technology, 真人线上娱乐 University, Denmark
Resumé
People living with advanced dementia are at risk of being regarded as lacking ‘personhood’ - one’s sense of being and living as a unique person. This has a negative impact on dementia care practices, given that maintaining the personhood of care recipients is considered essential. Such practices do not meet the priorities for dementia care set out in national dementia strategies and standards for care ethics. However, innovative research shows that personhood can be recognised at all stages of dementia, despite cognitive decline. This can be achieved through a phenomenological existential approach to those living with the condition.
The overall objective of the PhD project was to examine how personhood is expressed through care recipients’ lived experience as humans while living with advanced dementia, using an existential lifeworld-led approach. This included identifying when such expressions are promoted or hindered within caring relations. First studying existing literature on how formal caregivers’ perceptions of care recipients living with advanced dementia might be dehumanising by inhibiting them from experiencing a sense of being human (Article I). Then followed by a four-mouth field study in two nursing homes specialised in advanced dementia care. This involved observing how residents living with such a condition express their sense of being human in their caring relations (Article II), as well as instances where care staff supported this humanising sense (Article III). In addition, interviews with care staff were conducted to underpin these observations.
The findings showed that unintentional embodied (mis)perceptions in formal caregivers, can elicit dehumanising attitudes, which they need to recognise in themselves to be able to resist them through virtue ethics. Additionally, that it is possible to recognise and support human expressions in care recipients living with advanced dementia. This requires formal carers to be open, curious, and imaginative towards the behaviours and utterances of the human behind the dementia condition. When these appear unclear, they must try to look again and empathetically reflect on its underlying human reason and meaning. As such, this developed knowledge can support the personhood of care recipients living with advanced dementia and thereby guide a more humanly sensitive care. A care capable of holding on to these care recipients’ status as the unique persons they are and always will be.
The dissertation will be available for reading at the 真人线上娱乐 University Library before the defence (on-site use). The dissertation will also be available at the defence.