Ebook: Palliative care and end-of-life decisions

Preface 1. Broadening The Boundaries of Palliative Medicine 2. Total Pain Management and Adjusted Care: An Evolving Ideal 3. Medical Futility: The Template for Decision-making 4. Reconstructing The Principle of Double Effect 5. Physician Assistance at Death or Euthanasia? 6. Shaping a Compassionate Response to End-Stage Illness 7. Toward a Good Death: A Socio-Legal, Ethical, and Medical Challenge.

Total pain management mandates that an ethic of adjusted care be implemented at the end-stage of life which acknowledges ethically, legally, and clinically the use of terminal sedation as efficacious treatment, George P. Smith's Palliative Care and End-of-Life Decisions completes a Bioethics-Health Care epistemology begun in 1989, which addresses the specific issue of managing palliative care at the end-stage of life. Smith argues forcefully that in order to palliate the whole person (encompassing physical and psychological states), an ethic of adjusted care requires recognition of a fundamental right to avoid cruel and unusual suffering from terminal illness. Specifically, this book urges wider consideration and use of terminal sedation as efficacious medical care and as a reasonable procedure in order to safeguard a 'right' to a dignified death. The principle of medical futility is seen as a proper construct for implementing this process. The state legislative responses of California, Vermont, and Washington in enacting Death with Dignity legislation - allowing those with end-stage terminal illness to receive pharmacological assistance in ending their own lives - is held by Smith to be not only commendable, but the proper response for enlightened state action.

"For decades Professor Smith has been at the vanguard of research into the law as it concerns end-of-life decision-making. In this book he once again he jumps into the breach, reformulating the debate and setting out a way forward that will have a lasting impact on the field for years to come."--Cameron Stewart, Pro-Dean and Professor of Health, Law and Ethics, The University of Sydney, Australia "A detailed analysis of end-of-life treatment, this book offers an important contribution to an area of academic, political, ethical and religious concern. Palliative Care and End-of-Life Decisions covers a broad range of issues, including the nature of pain and of pain management, the concept of medical futility, the doctrine of double effect, the regulation of physician-assisted death, and an analysis of the nature of a 'good death'. Although dealing with a controversial issue, Smith does so with analytical depth and sophistication, while making an impassioned case for reform." - Jonathan Herring, Fellow in Law, Exeter College; Professor of Law, Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Oxford, UK.

Electronic book text. - Epublication based on: 9781137379153, 2013.