In palliative care, it is not uncommon for people with serious illnesses to wish to hasten their death. These wishes present considerable challenges for health care professionals. The purpose of this review is to support healthcare professionals in their understanding and apprehension of patients' wishes to hasten their death. In order to do so, we will present the definition of this wish, and then we will study it, based on three main components, which are intentions, motivations and interactions. The common thread of this review lies in the following question: how to best support the human who faces death?
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bulcan.2021.02.009 | DOI Listing |
Palliat Support Care
January 2025
Department of Palliative Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Objectives: Wishes to hasten death (WTHDs) are common in patients with serious illness. The Schedule of Attitudes Toward Hastened Death (SAHD) is a validated 20-item instrument for measuring WTHD. Two short versions have also been developed based on statistical item selection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNurs Rep
December 2024
Department of Philosophy, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA.
Background/objectives: Caring for patients at the end of life can involve issues that are ethically and legally fraught: withholding or withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration, pain control that could hasten death, aggressive treatment that is continued when it seems only to be prolonging suffering, patients who request medical assistance in dying, and so forth. Clinicians may find that their deeply held ethical principles conflict with law, institutional policy, or patients' choices. In these situations, they may consider either refusing to participate in procedures that they find morally abhorrent (conscientious refusal) or providing care that they believe to be ethically obligatory despite being contrary to law or policy (conscientious commitment).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNPJ Prim Care Respir Med
December 2024
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Lilavati Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai, India.
Acute exacerbations of COPD (ECOPD) are an important event in the life of a COPD patient as it causes significant deterioration of physical, mental, and social health, hastens disease progression, increases the risk of dying and causes a huge economic loss. Preventing ECOPD is therefore one of the most important goals in the management of COPD. Before the patient is discharged after hospitalization for ECOPD, it is crucial to offer an evidence-based care bundle protocol that will help minimize the future risk of readmissions and death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPalliat Care Soc Pract
December 2024
School of Social Work, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Background: Despite extensive theoretical debate, empirical research on medical aid in dying (MAID) largely has disregarded broader, contextual factors as potential correlates of attitudes in hospice clinicians.
Objective: Informed by institutional theory and neofunctional attitude theory, the objective of the current study was to quantitatively examine hospice clinicians' attitudes toward MAID as functions of institutional characteristics relating to (Aim 1) individual adherence to hospice values and (Aim 2) state law.
Design: We used a cross-sectional design.
Background: Deaths can be caused by terminal illnesses, accidents, or natural disasters. However, medically, death can be hastened by healthcare providers, patients themselves, or their relatives. In advanced cancers where the patient's quality of life is compromised, Euthanasia can be used to hasten death.
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