On Tuesday 23rd July Claudia Rossy defended her doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Implications of Forgiveness in the End-of-Life Context from Three Perspectives: Literature, Palliative Care Patients and Spiritual Caregivers’, obtaining a grade of ‘Excellent Cum Laude’.
It was directed by Dr. Iris Crespo Martín and Dr. Maria Fernández Capo. The tribunal was composed of Dr Joaquin T. Limonero (Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) as president, Dr Niels Van Poecke (Amsterdam University Medical Centers) as member and Dr María Prieto Ursúa (Universidad Pontificia Comillas) as secretary.
The doctoral thesis is composed of three studies: a review of the literature on forgiveness at the end of life, another study that evaluated forgiveness in patients with advanced cancer and a final study in which she qualitatively explored how spiritual counsellors (a professionalised figure in the Netherlands) approach forgiveness. In order to carry out this last study, Dr. Claudia Rossy spent 3 months as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The project provides a triple perspective in which the lack of precision in the concept, how forgiveness can reduce emotional distress in patients with advanced illnesses and the need to develop forgiveness interventions to train palliative care professionals in addressing the need for forgiveness.
