End-of-life care

important topics of the day: health care. Health care impacts each one of us directly or indirectly. Health care has been a topic of conversation since WWII. Initially, health care was a privilege and not a right. There was a cost for this privilege and it came in the form of a premium or monthly payment. Today, we can thank the Affordable Care Act (ACA), for what was once a privilege is now a basic human right for all people. The ACA is paving the way for health care coverage regardless…

allow decision making regarding treatment to be done effectively. Effective communication will allow healthcare providers to provide good quality end of life care and to help them with their concerns and questions. Each patient has different communication needs depending on various factors, this need to be considered when planning a patient’s end of life care. Every patient is different and communication needs to be patient specific. In order for a conversation to be communicated…

treatment or care by which his life would or might be prolonged, the doctors responsible for his care must give effect to his wishes, even though they do not consider it to be in his best interests to do so. […] To this extent, the principle of the sanctity of human life must yield to the principle of self-determination”.…

which that following a one moral principle could breach the other. Euthanasia is one of the widely known ethical dilemmas over the recent decades. Euthanasia is by means of individual’s competent and voluntary request, physician deliberately ends individual’s life by administering medication with the intention of compassion. On the other hand, Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) is as per individual’s voluntary and competent request physician is purposely support a person to commit suicide through…

therefore they are faced with different diseases and ailments that were not very common a century ago such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. When struck with any of this terminal illness patient are sometimes faced with end of life decisions. End of life decisions have legal and ethical concerns based on patient autonomy, beneficence, and the loss of decision making (Peirce & Smith, 2013). Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide has been gaining momentum in the United States and…

End-of-Life Choices and The Law Patients must with weigh the pros and cons of assisted dying when making an end-of-life decision. This is a personal valuation of how one wishes to spend their final days. The benefits of choosing end-of-life are patient autonomy, quality of life, and end of life costs. The pitfalls of end-of-life decisions, for patients with ALS, include not making decisions in time due the unpredictability of the disease, the patient’s value of quality of life may differ…

Physician-Assisted suicide is when a patient has a terminal illness and requests that a doctor prescribe them medication to end their life. There are already states in the US that allow it. According to Varadarajan, Freeman, and Parmar (2016), these states are, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, and in Bernalillo County in New Mexico (p. 1019). These laws allow the patient to take control of their own body and decide what they think is best for themselves, rather than having the law tell…

physician-assisted suicide would not be wise. Selecting physicians to determine if a patient were cogent enough for physician-assisted suicide would be troublesome for this type of treatment as many professionals in the health care industry including doctors hold a bias towards the life individuals with an illness live. Additionally, physicians are also not qualified or trained to assess whether or not a patient’s wish to…

The Journey of Cultural Practices in End of Life Care Initiative administrative roles and responsibilities will include the development of realistic and obtainable outcomes through the means of a community needs assessment for cohesive integration to end of life care services for culturally diverse community members. Both the Ottawa Charter tenants and those with the UNE SSW vision, identify the need for reorienting the current practices that block health and well-being promotion, are socially…

this section that death may be a sensitive, fearful, and even taboo topic to discuss with older adults. Older adults from different cultural background perceive death differently. Their perception will lead to different coping styles regarding end-of-life care for themselves and their beloved ones. Religious and spiritual beliefs play an important role in their perception and coping styles. Older adults with strong religious and spiritual beliefs tend to accept…