Finding Dignity at the End of Life discusses the need for palliative care as a human right and explores a whole-person methodology for use in treatment. The book examines the concept of palliative care as a holistic human right from the perspective of multiple aspects of faith, ideology, culture, and nationality. Integrating a humanities-based approach, chapters provide detailed discussions of spirituality, suffering, and healing from scholars from around the world. Within each chapter, the authors address a different cultural and religious focus by examining how this topic relates to questions of inherent dignity, both ethically and theologically, and how different spiritual lenses may inform our interpretation of medical outcomes. Mental health practitioners, allied professionals, and theologians will find this a useful and reflective guide to palliative care and its connection to faith, spirituality, and culture.

This book addresses the problems faced by people and hospitals dedicated to providing optimal end-of-life care and asks whether ethicists can function as experts on this subject. Though ethics consultation is a growing practice in medical contexts, difficult questions surrounding the role of ethicists in professional decision-making remain. The chapters in this book examine the nature and plausibility of moral expertise, the relationship between character and expertise, the nature and limits of moral authority, the question of how one might become a moral expert, and the trustworthiness of moral testimony. This volume not only engages with the growing literature in the debate on end-of-life care but also offers new perspectives from both academics and practitioners. Such perspectives include ways on how to get together to optimize end-of-life care. This book is of particular interest to bioethicists, clinicians, ethics committees, students of social epistemology, patient groups, and institutions, especially religious, who may not be sufficiently imparting the social teachings of end-of-life care. It also shows how they are indeed stakeholders for what is today called ‘a good death’. These new essays advance discussions and provide practical information on dying as well as acting as a guide to those interested in actively effecting change.

This globally focused resource integrates sound research evidence, real-life case scenarios, and effective, practical strategies to address a key health care initiative of the 21st century--optimal quality of life for older adults. Distinguished by its broad and global outlook, the book includes contributions from an international cadre of widely published scholars and is designed for easy integration into traditional nursing education curricula. The book explores the experiences of older adults at home, and in acute and primary care, assisted living, nursing home and hospice environments and examines their needs for dealing with multiple, differentiated health, spiritual, and emotional considerations.

Dignity in the care of patients and clients of all ages, whether in hospital or community settings, is an area of increasing national and international importance and concern. However, a comprehensive, accessible resource for nurses and midwives on the theory and practice of dignity in care has until now been lacking. Dignity in Healthcare provides a practical approach, underpinned by up-to-date theory, to this crucial issue for those providing care to people in all stages of life, including those with mental illnesses or learning disabilities. Care in areas such as maternity, community, palliative and acute care and others is explored in depth. Approaches to education and practice development for promoting dignity in care are also outlined clearly and accessibly, with each chapter combining an evidence-based theoretical underpinning with practical application through scenarios. Pre-registration nursing and midwifery students and their teachers will find this book essential reading, but it will also be of interest to practising nurses, midwives and other health professionals seeking clear insights into the principle of care that is central to all healthcare professions.

In Exploring Issues of Care, Dying and the End of Life, practitioners and academics from a range of disciplines and nationalities discuss matters pertinent to the end of life. Together they explore a variety of issues including communication, facing up to and handling death, as well as investigating what constitutes the 'good death'.

The information surveyed in this volulme is designed to provide the clinician with an expert overview of the current state of the art in breast cancer management. It should provide at least a flavor of the major paradigm shift that is occurring in this rapidly evolving field. Breast cancer management is moving away from a "kill or cure" model and advancing toward a model focused on strategies of prevention and of long-term management of breast cancer as a chronic disease. The acceptance of this new paradigm by patients and clinicians alike will represent a major focus for the twenty-first century.

Many advocates of euthanasia consider the criminal law to be an inappropriate medium to adjudicate the profound ethical and humanitarian dilemmas associated with end of life decisions. 'Euthanasia,Death with Dignity and the Law' examines the legal response to euthanasia and end of life decisions and considers whether legal reform is an appropriate response to calls for euthanasia to be more readily available as a mechanism for providing death with dignity. Through an analysis of consent to treatment, living wills and autonomous medical decision making, euthanasia is carefully located within its legal, medical, and social contexts. This book focuses on the impact of euthanasia on the dignity of both the recipient and the practitioner while emphasising the legal, professional, and ethical implications of euthanasia and its significance for the exercise of clinical discretion. It will provide a valuable addition to the euthanasia debate.

Assisted dying and human dignity are two extremely contested topics in Bioethics. This volume offers the first book-length attempt to bring both together. Its authors develop detailed philosophical analyses of dignity, and how it relates to assisted suicide and euthanasia.

As a result of the methodological route traced and followed, this document systematizes nine technical guidelines that will guarantee the right to a dignified death, to legal capacity and make operational the principle of the best interpretation of persons’ will and preferences. These guidelines address the following matters: (1) the significance of making the best interpretation of the person’s will and preferences; (2) the need to assess the impossibility of giving consent of those for whom MAiD is requested; (3) the composition of the support network; (4) addressing and ruling out conflicts of interest; (5) verifying that the health system has offered palliative care and the adequacy of the therapeutic effort ; (6) the role that both the medical records and previous conversations with care practitioners can play in the process; (7) the assessment of suffering in terms of the person’s life experience; (8) constructing the life narrative and the best interpretation of the will and preferences through interviews with the support network and; (9) the necessary consensus in the interpretation of the will and preferences.

Emphasising the multi-disciplinary nature of palliative care the fourth edition of this text also looks at the individual professional roles that contribute to the best-quality palliative care.