Over the last 40 years the proliferation of the biopsychosocial (BPS) model across clinical and theoretical research has shown that psychosocial factors can be shown to be causes, co-factors, or sequelae of many illnesses. ...

Ethical end of life decisions are increasingly viewed by the global healthcare community as complex and imbued with uncertainty in institutional healthcare settings. Each person experiences health decision-making and the ...

Cases like those of Terry Schiavo or Eluana Englaro have given rise to a lot of discussions at all levels. What both of them have in common is that, beyond the reasons given for terminating their lives and the methods used ...

In societal priority setting between health programs for different patient groups, many people are reluctant to discriminate too strongly between those who can benefit much from treatment and those who can benefit moderately. ...

Palliative care provides open and honest communication, medically appropriate goal setting, and meticulous attention to symptom assessment and control. The Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is a growing ...

BACKGROUND: Despite the needs for people with disabilities to plan for times of serious illness in order to receive good end-of-life care and to have their wishes respected, this community has often been overlooked in the ...

In the UK, community care has led to more complex relationships for mental health nurses. They need to respect the rights of service users to confidentiality while also respecting the rights of family caregivers to information ...

The conventional wisdom is that managed care's brief life is over and we are now in a post-managed care era. In fact, managed care has a long history and continues to thrive. Writers also often assume that managed care is ...

Life-extending interventions for older persons are changing medical knowledge and societal expectations about longevity. Today's consciousness about growing older is partly shaped by a new form of ethics, constituted by ...