OBJECTIVES To describe the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients who sought medication under the Washington State Death with Dignity (DWD) Act since its inception in 2009. METHODS Chart review at 3 tertiary medical centers in the Seattle/Puget Sound region and comparison to publicly available data of ALS and all-cause DWD cohorts from Washington and Oregon. RESULTS In Washington Stat...

Background: most older people living in nursing homes die there. An empirically based model of dignity has been developed, which forms the basis of a brief psychotherapy to help promote dignity and reduce distress at the end of life. Objective: to explore the generalisability of the dignity model to older people in nursing homes. Methods: qualitative interviews were used to explore views on mai...

Popular sovereignty is a key component of modern political thinking, yet a history of the concept has not previously been attempted. This volume does not pretend to offer a comprehensive treatment. It arises from a collaborative project involving scholars specialising across a range of periods – spanning ancient, medieval, early modern and modern political thought. What has emerged is not a con...

Modern human rights instruments ground human rights in the concept of human dignity, without providing an underlying theory of human dignity. This paper examines the central importance of human dignity, understood as not humiliating people, in traditional Jewish ethics. It employs this conception of human dignity to examine and criticize U.S. use of humiliation tactics and torture in the interr...

The purpose of this article is to develop a conception of death with dignity and to examine whether it is vulnerable to the sort of criticisms that have been made of other conceptions. In this conception "death" is taken to apply to the process of dying; "dignity" is taken to be something that attaches to people because of their personal qualities. In particular, someone lives with dignity if t...

The basic tenets of palliative care may be summarized as the goal of helping patients to die with dignity. The term "dignity" provides an overarching framework that may guide the physician, patient, and family in defining the objectives and therapeutic considerations fundamental to end-of-life care. Dignity-conserving care is care that may conserve or bolster the dignity of dying patients. Usin...

This review aimed to explore nursing literature and research on dignity in care of inpatients and to evaluate how the care patients received in the hospital setting was related to perceived feelings of being dignified or undignified. Studies conducted between 2000 and 2010 were considered, using Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and MEDLINE, and the search terms 'patient ...

BACKGROUND Older people, living in nursing homes, are exposed to diverse situations, which may be associated with loss of dignity. To help them maintain their dignity, it is important to explore, how dignity is preserved in such context. Views of dignity and factors influencing dignity have been studied from both the residents' and the care providers' perspective. However, most of these studies...

Proponents of the legalization of assisted suicide often appeal to our supposed right to "die with dignity" to defend their case. I examine and assess different notions of "dignity" that are operating in many arguments for the legalization of assisted suicide, and I find them all to be deficient. I then consider an alternative conception of dignity that is based on Aristotle's conception of the...

The promotion of patient dignity is an important aspect of healthcare provision. However, there is evidence to suggest that patient dignity is not being promoted as expected and a number of attributing factors have been suggested in the literature. This article proposes that healthcare educators should incorporate the subject of dignity in its own right within the curriculum. Attempts in teachi...