In the hospices and palliative care units, only patients are treated and accompanied whose serious illness is well advanced, progressing and whose life expectancy is foreseeably limited. The goals of palliative care are to alleviate all ailments and worries and to maintain or restore quality of life. In the entire act, the approaching dying is a constant topic, about which - spoken or not - everything revolves. Death always goes with it, has to be dealt with and endured. The focus on the end of life applies to both patients and those working there. The full-time and voluntary workers working in this field are aware that they are living in a social space contaminated by death. It is certainly not a question of whether the topic is easy to digest, but how to work on it every day without being harmed. Sometimes it is just a matter of rethinking, renaming, taking a different perspective or even concrete options for action. At the same time, it points out the force fields and protective factors and makes the preciousness of the work in this existential field clear.
