engleski

Medical ethics in pain and palliative medicine

Palliative medicine/care aims to relive suffering and improve quality of life for patients with advanced illness and their families. It is provided by an interdisciplinary team and offered in conjuction with all other appropriate forms of medical treatment. Medical ethics and palliative medicine/care are nowadays entering into a new and fascinating phase of interaction and cooperation. On the one hand, many moral issues and dilemmas arise in the practice of palliative care. Palliative care according ten Have and Clark has value in itself. It is important that future healthcare is well adapted to the changing needs of patients. Good care will at least be as important as high- technology, cure-orientated medical intervention. Also, the search for a good death is likely to permeate future societies as people seek to avoid suffering and a loss of dignity. Further attention to palliative care modalities can be one of the answers to requests for euthanasia, although it does not imply that palliative care needs to be developed first and foremost in order to provide an antidote for euthanasia. The major goal of palliative care is to provide good care and to improve the quality of life of the patients and their families, not to avoid euthanasia. This may be a secondary goal, ethically imperative, but the first internal goal of palliative medicine and palliative care practice is to care for those who are about to lose human existence.

medical ethics ; pain ; palliative care ; palliative medicine

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