“End of life stories” to prepare for death: the Amfora association renews the approach to palliative care
What is important to me? How do I see my life? What does death mean to me? These existential questions can be difficult to address at the very end of life. Yet they are essential and can help us to live through this special time with greater peace of mind.
Since 2015, the Amfora association has been offering people at the end of their lives the chance to tell their stories, put their feelings into words and take stock of their lives. These interviews, lasting around an hour and conducted by a volunteer trained by the association, are then written down in a notebook, materialising a link that remains with loved ones despite the separation, a unique portrait of a person at the moment of saying "goodbye" to life.
To develop this proposal, the Amfora association organises training courses for palliative care networks, care for the elderly and institutions for the disabled, to help them conduct and develop end-of-life interviews. Amfora also works with the Samana association, to train their volunteers to work with people at the end of their lives. These interviews are an original and creative way of developing the fourth pillar of palliative care, which aims to meet patients' spiritual and existential needs.
Amfora was recently awarded the Gert Noël Prize, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation, worth 30,000 euros. This sum will no doubt enable the association, which is currently mainly active in Flanders, to extend the concept to the French-speaking part of Belgium.
