L'accompagnement éthique. De patient à agent dans l'adversité

An ill person and her relatives who receive the diagnosis of the Alzheimer's disease can lose their marks, which make the reflection, the deliberation and the decision making process harder. How can a healthcare professional accompany this person and her relatives to help them finding their balance and maintaining the meaning in their life with significant decisions and activities? This article presents a method of ethical support, simple and efficient, conceived for clinical use to favor the autonomy and the self-fulfillment of the patient's life and her relatives which is diminished by the illness. This method has the advantage for them to maintain their freedom to choose and to create significant activities. For the healthcare professional, this method promotes a kind of relational ethics with and for others. One of the most import issue consists in favoring the establishment of just institutions which know how to create an environment, the conditions and opportunities which support the freedom to think and to live according to what is meaningful for the ill person and her relatives.