Dignity Explained
What is dignity?
There are many common factors that affect dignity
When people use health care services, their sense of dignity is affected by many common factors. One of the most important is how they see themselves, which is affected by how they believe they are seen by others. Considering that so much anxiety is connected to illness, it’s easy to understand why people working in health care can have such a strong impact on the dignity of the people they interact with every day. Whether they realize it or not, they are often the ‘mirror’ by which patients and their families judge their own status within the system.
People working in health care have a natural desire to be helpful and supportive. Their challenge is to understand all of the differing factors that may affect an individual’s sense of dignity, and how they can address these factors as they go about their daily work. Dignity in Care provides solutions, based on solid research, to guide them in this task.
Will you be a champion of Dignity in Care?
You can help to ensure that health care treats the whole person – body, mind and spirit. It’s a tremendous responsibility – and opportunity – for everyone working in health care, whether they do their job in the operating room or on the telephone.
We invite you to join us in this important pursuit.
About the Dignity in Care team.
The Dignity in Care Research Team has been conducting research on psychosocial, existential and spiritual dimensions of palliative end-of-life care for over 25 years. The team’s primary goal is to improve quality of life and ease suffering of dying people and their families through research. After studying the importance of dignity in the lives of dying patients, the team began looking at how their compelling findings could be extended to other aspects of health care.
The Dignity in Care Lead Investigator
For the last 25 years, Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov‘s program of research has earned him recognition as one of the world’s leading palliative care scholars and researchers. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba.
Dr. Chochinov has built an interdisciplinary research team with expertise in psychiatry, psychology, qualitative and quantitative analysis, biostatistics, nursing, and palliative care medicine. Collaborating with researchers around the world, they have compiled a large body of work on the Dignity in Care approach.
Current Research Team Members
This internationally-recognized team has successfully broached difficult topics spanning end-of-life distress, depression, desire for death and will to live; hopelessness and its connection with suicide; personality and coping at the end of life; and finally, the issue of how to help patients die with dignity.
 DR. HARVEY MAX CHOCHINOV MD, PhD, FRCPC Lead Investigator |  DR. JAMES BOLTON MD, FRCPC Collaborator |  DR. KENDISS OLAFSON MD, FRCPC, MPH Collaborator |  DR. CHRISTIAN LA RIVIERE MD, FRCPC Collaborator |
 DR. TIM HIEBERT MD, FRCPC, MSc Collaborator |  DR. JENNIFER HENSEL MD, FRCPC, MSc Collaborator |  DR. MAIA KREDENSTER PhD Collaborator |  DR. RENÉE EL-GABALAWY PhD Collaborator |
 DR. KRISTIN REYNOLDS PhD Collaborator |  SALINA PIRZADA BSc, MSc Research Associate |  KELSEY PAPINEAU BSc Research Coordinator |  GAGAN GILL BSc Research Associate |