Dear friends, colleagues and readers,
Since 2008, Palliativ-Portal has approached palliative medicine and hospice work from many different perspectives. Our aim has always been to avoid silence around these subjects without surrendering to them. We want to be open, but not arbitrary; critical, but not aggressive; emotional, but not sentimental; factual, but not cold. With this attitude we have tried, and will continue to try, to come a little closer to the subject of dying.
In recent years our detailed newsletters have also given readers intensive insight into different areas of palliative care. Looking back at the many conversations and interviews, the common ground is striking. Whether we spoke with Prof. Monika Führer about paediatric palliative medicine, discussed the pros and cons of the LPC, looked back with Dr. Thomas Binsack on his career, or explored the communicative dimension of palliative medicine with Prof. Dr. Maria Wasner, there were never simple answers.
Instead, there was always a visible will to authenticity, demanded and lived by our interview partners: meeting the patient with reliability grounded equally in professional knowledge and humility. I hope this attitude could also be felt and read in those conversations.
Now we would like to expand our range of information further and introduce the new magazine of Palliativ-Portal: COLUMBA. It will appear quarterly and will be more than an interview. It will bring together important events, relevant topics, difficult cases and inspiring people and their work. In doing so, we want to provide information where fear and lack of knowledge make the care and accompaniment of seriously ill and dying people more difficult.
Because everything always comes back to one question: does it help the person? And what exactly does that person want and need? That is what matters. And so that it remains so, we want to keep listening: to the dying person, and to the people who are there for them and for their relatives. In this way we understand better, in life and in dying.
I warmly invite you to engage with COLUMBA and wish you a stimulating read.
Yours,
Dr. Jörg Cuno | Palliative physician and initiator of Palliativ-Portal
