Economics, Ethics, and End-of-Life Care

Economics, ethics, and end-of-life care.

PRESSURE TO REDUCE TOTAL HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURES IN THE UNITED States has intensified. Despite a contracting health care budget that has sensitized society to the issues of resource allocation, the demand for the health care dollar has continued to expand. The disciplines of economics and bioethics have each outlined strategies to mitigate this conflict. Yet because of divergent core preferenc...

End-of-life care and Catholic ethics.

Ethics perspectives on end-of-life care.

T echnologic advancements in aggressive medical management at the end of life now have led more Americans to fear how they die than death itself. The lay popular press 1-4 reflects how widespread is public dissatisfaction about health care system management of dying in the United States. Surveys5 indicate that if given the choice, most Americans would avoid aggressive intensive care unit (ICU) ...

Jewish medical ethics and end-of-life care.

While Judaism espouses the infinite value of human life, Judaism recognizes that all life is finite and, as such, its teachings are compatible with the principles of palliative medicine and end-of-life care as they are currently practiced. Jewish medical ethics as derived from Jewish law, has definitions for the four cardinal values of secular medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficen...

Defining end-of-life care from perspectives of nursing ethics.

Despite increasing interests and urgent needs for quality end-of-life care, there is no exact definition of what is the interval referred to as end of life or what end-of-life care is. The purpose of this article is to report our examination of terms related to end-of-life care and define end-of-life care from nursing ethics perspectives. Current terms related to end-of-life care, such as termi...