recent advances in life-sustaining treatments and technologies, have given rise to newly-emerged, critical and sometimes, controversial questions regarding different aspects of end-of-life decision-making and care. since religious values are among the most influential factors in these decisions, the present study aimed to examine the islamic scholars' views on end-of-life care. a structured int...

In trying to comprehend a culture and its ways of structuring the world, much can be learned from addressing the manner in which intimate family relationships are ordered and family crises channeled toward care. A family's experience with illness cannot be considered in isolation from the cultural milieu in which it occurs. Family adaptation to cancer diagnosis is a continuous motion between ma...

Four cases are summarized in which the general practitioner is involved in the terminal care of one partner of a stable marital relationship. The need to conceptualize the expectations of the patient, the family and the doctor in terminal care is stressed. An attempt is made to illustrate how the quality of the pre-existing sexual relationship, the dying person's own sexuality, and ultimately t...

Two years after the establishment of a terminal care support team, the team perceived that a number of patients were not being referred to them, and many of those seen were referred at a very late stage in their illness. We sent a questionnaire to all clinicians and ward sisters in the district to elicit their knowledge of the team and attitudes to their role. Although most respondents had care...

The first year's work of Bloomsbury terminal care support team has been analysed from routinely recorded information. The patients accepted by the team were of younger average age than all people dying from cancer within the catchment population. The median survival of patients after first contact with the team was 49 days, but survival of patients referred by general practitioners and hospital...

PATIENTS may be referred to hospital in the terminal stages of cancer for specific medical needs or because home circumstances are unsuitable. Other patients may be cared for in difficult conditions at home, because of the wishes of the patients or their relatives. The aim of the present study was to categorize the terminal needs of patients dying from cancer in the city of Manchester, which ha...