“End-of-life care decision making carries paramount importance due
to the advancements in medical sciences. Since medical science has
evolved over the time and now has a potentiality to reshape the
circumstances during death and in turn prolong lives, various ethical
issues surround end-of-life care (Karnik, 2016.”) “Decision-making”
for end-of-life care has earned paramount importance as it has
capability to prolong human life with the support of medical
technologies or can let the natural death process continue by
foregoing the treatment option. Hence, end-of-life care is facing
various ethical dilemmas. a
“Decision making” is itself a very complex process of thoughts and
sets-up various challenges for patients and their families to make up
an end-of-life care decision. Persons have a right to put forward their
end-of-life treatment preferences. The Federal Patient Self-
Determination Act (PSDA) effective since 1991 has facilitated
communication between the healthcare providers and patients or
consumers. The person’s right to autonomously voice their end-of-
life treatment choices has to be respected ethically considering the
use of advanced treatments and their prognosis. This right of
autonomy has some limitations, and hence faces an ethical dilemma.
The healthcare professional should respect the patient’s autonomy
while considering its limitations and carry out their duties to benefit
the patient without doing harm.
Even though we are discussing about patients right to autonomy we
are talking about its limitations. To elaborate further, autonomy gives
patients’ a right to control their treatment according to their
preferences, though many a times their autonomy is not respected.
They receive end-of-life care which is in-consistent with their end-of-
life care preferences [6]. This gives importance to the ethical issue of
autonomy surrounding end-of-life care preferences.
References
Karnik, S., & Kanekar, A, June 4, 2016. Ethical Issues Surrounding
End-of-Life Care: A Narrative Review. Healthcare (Basel,
Switzerland), 4(2), 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare4020024
