Unravelling the meaning of suffering in the context of euthanasia and assisted suicide: a multiperspective meta-ethnography
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This meta-ethnography aims to unravel the meaning of suffering in the context of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) using a multiperspective and international framework. More precisely, we seek to understand how the experience of suffering is (1) interpreted by the patients with a request, their close ones, and physicians and nurse practitioners who provide EAS and (2) how the cultural context may shape the way suffering is described. Using PRISMA guidelines, we included 19 articles (1) focusing on the experience of suffering; (2) written in Dutch, English, or French; (3) published in a peer-reviewed journal; and (4) using a qualitative design or containing rich qualitative data. Five intertwined dimensions were identified: existential, physical-neurocognitive, psycho-emotional, socio-environmental and systemic. Our results underline the nuances in the description of suffering across perspectives and cultural contexts. Our results may inspire those working on the threshold of suffering to adopt a nuanced and holistic approach when assessing patients with an EAS request.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.056 | 0.060 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".