 Hastening death in end-of-life care: A survey of doctorsClive Seale Social Science & Medicine, 2009, vol. 69, issue 11, 1659-1666 Abstract: The application of medical technology to prolong life at the expense of quality of life is widely debated in end-of-life care. A national survey of 3733 UK doctors reporting on the care of 2923 people who had died under their care is reported here. Results show that there was no time to make an 'end-of-life decision' (deciding to provide, withdraw or withhold treatment) for 8.5% of those reporting deaths. A further 55.2% reported decisions which they estimated would not hasten death and 28.9% reported decisions they had expected to hasten death. A further 7.4% reported deaths where they had to some degree intended to hasten death. Where patients or someone else had made a request for a hastened death, doctors were more likely to report expecting or at least partly intending to hasten death. Doctors usually made these decisions in consultation with colleagues, relatives and, where feasible, with patients. Intensive care specialists were particularly likely to report a degree of intention to hasten the end of life and to have treated patients lacking the capacity to discuss these decisions. Palliative medicine specialists were the least likely to report decisions they expected or at least partly intended to end life, in spite of reporting a high incidence of requests from their patients for a hastened death. Doctors with strong religious beliefs or who opposed the legalisation of assisted dying were unlikely to report such decisions. Elderly women and those with dementia are groups considered vulnerable in societies where a permissive approach is taken to hastening death in end-of-life care, but doctors describing these deaths were no more likely to report decisions which they expected or at least partly intended to end life. The survey suggests that concerns about the sanctity of life, as well as estimates of the quality of life, enter clinical decision-making. Keywords: UK; Euthanasia; Assisted; dying; Palliative; care; Intensive; care; Dying; Withdrawing; treatment; Withholding; treatment; Double; effect (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:69:y:2009:i:11:p:1659-1666 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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