Cancer is one of the most prevalent diseases in Brandenburg, as it is in nearly all other areas in Germany. In addition to the burden on the health care system, a cancer diagnosis often leads to enormous psychological stress for patients, their friends, and relatives. After a diagnosis, a patient will have a lot of questions and be in need of support in overviewing and understanding their options.
Based on this need, and the assumption that experiential knowledge can support those affected by chronic illnesses by living with the illness in their everyday life, the Institute of Social Medicine and Epidemiology developed a website where patients share their experiences from their cancer treatment and living with other chronic illnesses. The website, krankheitserfahrung.de, is a valuable resource for cancer patients as it informs and reassures through a wide spectrum of patient experiences based on interviews.
The website krankheitserfahrungen.de is a valuable resource for cancer patients as it informs and reassures through a wide spectrum of patient experiences based on interviews. The experiential knowledge differs quite a lot from academic experts knowledge. Might be this is one of the reasons why it is difficult to have systematic and comprehensive access to experiences of others. Although today there are many media for information exchange and a lot of reports of patients. This the website krankheitserfahrungen.de is exactly aiming at. It is a knowledge platform with experiences from suffering patients and there is a scientific research on these experiences and the results are presented in public via an internet platform. Over the past seven years, Krebsallianz has funded krankheitserfahrungen.de and will continue to do so over its next funding period. The website will soon feature some updates, firstly three new cancer modules will be added in early 2024, and after much research the topic of pain will play more a prominent role as well as an introduction to younger patients’ experiences. The project that researches patient experiences and collects the testimonials for the website has yielded some interesting results in two upcoming academic papers about the importance of experiential knowledge in living with chronic illnesses. Find out more about the Institute of Social Medicine and Epidemiology and visit krankheitserfahurung.de here. And here are some up-to-date publications on the KA website on illness experiences: www.krebsallianz.de/aktuelle-nachrichten/meldung/informationsbeduerfnisse-von-krebspatienten-besser-verstehen-ein-projekt-der-krebsallianz/