Death and Dignity: Exploring Physicians' Responsibilities After a Patient's Death

Dignity and death: a reply.

Some form of utilitarian approach can be discerned as underlying much current medical ethical decision-making. Criticisms of the practical effects of such an approach are not parried by asserting the fundamental strengths of utilitarianism as theory.

Death, Dignity, and Respect

Correction: Physicians' Experiences with the Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

BACKGROUND Physician-assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in October 1997. There are data on patients who have received prescriptions for lethal medications and died after taking the medications. There is little information, however, on physicians' experiences with requests for assistance with suicide. METHODS Between February and August 1999, we mailed a questionnaire to physicians who w...

Attitudes of Chinese Oncology Physicians Toward Death with Dignity

BACKGROUND Death with dignity (DWD) refers to the refusal of life-prolonging measures for terminally ill patients by "living wills" forms in advance. More and more oncology physicians are receiving DWD requests from advance cancer patients in mainland China. OBJECTIVE The study objective was to investigate the attitudes of Chinese oncology physicians toward the legalization and implementation...

Death Without Dignity

T he present health care environment conflicts with the values in· ternalized by many clinicians Patient care seems to be subordinated to a set of rules governing the length of hos· pitalization. The decision makers in health care seem to take a clerical rather than a clinical perspective. As one frustrated clinician exclaimed, "Forget TLC; it's DRGs that count." Although the feelings in this t...