Articles Tagged With: end of life
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Ethical Concerns Surround Accessibility and Documentation of Advance Care Plans
Advance care planning often is lacking, especially among marginalized groups. Values-based conversations, standardized documentation, and clinician prompts improve planning. Clear workflows and education help ensure patient wishes are honored, reducing conflicts and ethical dilemmas during critical care.
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Physicians Have Ethical Obligation to Provide Palliative Care: New Guidance
The American Medical Association affirms that physicians are ethically obligated to provide palliative care at any stage of illness and in all care settings. Barriers include training gaps, resource shortages, and cultural sensitivity issues, requiring expanded education and systemwide integration.
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Homelessness Raises Unique Ethical Concerns on End-of-Life Care
Homelessness complicates end-of-life care because of isolation, surrogate scarcity, and structural barriers. Ethicists should collaborate with interprofessional teams to ensure respectful, context-aware care and advocate for inclusive policies addressing this vulnerable population’s needs.
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Medical Mistrust Can Hinder End-of-Life Decision-Making
During medical training and early clinical practice, Scott Vasher, MD, observed that some patients, or their surrogate decision-makers, had an intrinsic trust in the healthcare team. Others seemed mistrustful. Vasher and colleagues conducted a study to measure surrogate decision-maker medical mistrust and identify risk factors for higher medical mistrust.
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Patients’ Socioeconomic Status Affects Decisions on Treatment Withdrawal
When ethicists consult on a case involving end-of-life decision-making, discussions center around the patient’s goals and values, prognosis, and preferences. Yet, income and insurance status are two other factors that affect the likelihood of patients withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, a recent study suggests.
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Educational Intervention Improves Older Latinos’ End-of-Life Care Planning
Susanny J. Beltran, PhD, MSW, and colleagues noticed that older Latinos consistently completed advance care planning documentation less frequently compared to the general population. They evaluated an educational intervention to see if it would improve advance care planning readiness and knowledge of older Latino adults.
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Ethicists Can Explore Rationale if Physician Refuses to Continue Life-Prolonging Interventions
Many ethics consults center around a conflict between a family who wants to continue life-prolonging interventions and a physician who refuses to provide it. But does the family understand the rationale for the decision?
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Advance Care Planning Boosted with Machine Learning Models
Patients who engage in advance care planning conversations are more likely to receive end-of-life care consistent with their wishes. A major challenge is accurately predicting when a patient is near the end of life. This is an area where machine learning models can help.
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Missed Opportunities for Goals of Care Discussion
Ethics consults often involve conflicts at the end of life. Some of those conflicts could have been avoided with earlier goals of care discussions.
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Ethical Considerations with End-of-Life Care for Immigrant Patients
What is a “good death?” The definition is unique to each individual patient.