The do-not-resuscitate order, introduced nearly a half century ago, continues to raise questions and controversy among health care providers and patients. In today's society, the expectation and availability of medical ...

CONTEXT: Tube-feeding is of questionable benefit for nursing home residents with advanced dementia. Approximately two-thirds of US nursing home residents who are tube fed had their feeding tube inserted during an acute ...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about what role physicians take in the decision-making process about life support in intensive care units. OBJECTIVE: To determine how responsibility is balanced between physicians and surrogates ...

The aims of this study are to examine the constructs of transformational leadership as they played out for one nurse who steered significant change in the care of the dying in the United States and to provide deeper insights ...

Samuel Golubchuk was unwittingly at the center of a medical controversy with important ethical ramifications. Mr. Golubchuk, an 84-year-old patient whose precise neurological level of function was open to debate, was being ...

Nowadays, euthanasia has the meaning of the direct administration of a lethal agent to the patient by another party with a merciful intent after patients' request. Physician assisted suicide refers to the patient intentionally ...

BACKGROUND: When suffering becomes unbearable for patients they might request for euthanasia. OBJECTIVE: To study which patients request for euthanasia and which requests actually resulted in euthanasia in relation with ...

Recent years have seen a growing recognition that dementia is a terminal illness and that patients with advanced dementia nearing the end of life do not currently receive adequate palliative care. However, research into ...

BACKGROUND: Communication about the deactivation of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) in patients near the end of life is rare. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether hospices are admitting patients with ICDs, whether ...