"Gathering the voice of people at the end of life"

She joined this small team of around ten people in 2012, after completing two masters degrees, one in sociology and the other in demography. A dual training that gave her access to complementary methodologies that are very useful for her research. Questionnaires provide a snapshot of a phenomenon, while interviews enable us to delve deeper, to understand its meaning and underpinnings, she explains. To better understand the phenomena it studies, the research team triangulates discourses: it meets patients, but also their relatives and the caregivers who gravitate around them. Gathering testimonials is really exciting, confides Hélène Trimaille. Highly motivated by these human encounters, she is also motivated by the idea of making herself, in all humility, the spokesperson for people at the end of life, and of making, through the results of her work, a modest contribution to improving their daily lives. There's an impressive lack of discussion around end-of-life and aging issues, and unfortunately, because we don't talk about it, it leads to problematic situations, she laments.

The young researcher thus analyzed the healthcare pathways of those who, due to a poorly anticipated loss of autonomy, undergo unnecessary, deleterious and costly hospitalizations¹. She studied requests for euthanasia and assisted suicide from elderly people living in EHPAD². She also interviewed people usually considered incapable of deciding for themselves: patients suffering from cognitive disorders (such as Alzheimer's disease) who oppose care and treatment³.

Hélène Trimaille is currently taking part in a study on the prescription of multiple drugs, the interactions of which are not always under control (polymedication)⁴. She is interviewing patients, their relatives and their GPs to explore how they see these prescriptions. The young researcher is also involved in the study just launched by the Plateforme nationale pour la recherche sur la fin de vie on the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis in EHPAD⁵.

Having always been very interested in the question of food, she would like to be able to conduct research in this field. Like refusal of care, the behavior of elderly people who refuse to eat can be interpreted as a way of regaining some control over their lives. Perhaps the directory of researchers at the National Platform for End-of-Life Research, of which she is a member, will enable her to find collaborators to explore this area?

1. PAGE study: Parcours de santé des Personnes AGEes hospitalisées de façon non pertinente : analyses qualitative et économique. Currently being published
2. DESAGE study: Etude des Demandes d'Euthanasie ou de Suicide Assisté chez les personnes âGEes vivant en établissement d'hébergement. Study in progress
3. Étude OPTAH : Etude des situations d'Opposition aux Procédures diagnostiques ou aux Traitements chez les personnes Agées Hospitalisées en service de gériatrie aigue. Study in progress.
4. DOSAGE study: Subjective factors of polymedication in the elderly: qualitative study of the perceptions of patients, their relatives and referring physicians. Study in progress.
5. COVIDEHPAD study: Study of confinement and end-of-life issues in EHPADs, linked to the covid-19 epidemic in France. Prospective, multicenter, qualitative study. Study in progress (read the article on the platform website).

Contact:
View Hélène Trimaille's profile on the researchers directory

Published May 14, 2020
Author: Delphine Gosset