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Modules:
Introduction
1. Advance Care Planning
2. Communicating Bad News
3. Whole Patient Assessment
4. Pain Management
5. Assisted Suicide Debate
6. Anxiety, Delirium
7. Goals of Care
8. Sudden Illness
9. Medical Futility
10. Common Symptoms
11. Withholding Treatment
12. Last Hours of Living
13. Cultural Issues
14. Religion, Spirituality
15. Legal Issues
16. Social and Psychological
More About:
Hospice Care
Clergy and Faith Communities
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Why is Knowledge of Legal Issues Important?
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Traditionally, questions of end of life care resolved through decision-making by physicians in conjunction with patients and families
- If the dying patient is a child, such questions were resolved with parents
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However, as technologic breakthroughs contributed to advanced medical interventions, new questions arose concerning the appropriate use or discontinuation of these interventions
- In the absence of other guidance, many of these questions have been brought to courts for resolution
- Landmark bioethics cases have acted as important benchmarks of the evolving societal consensus within the United States
- Case names often act as a shorthand regarding the principles for which they have come to stand
- Many physicians are unfamiliar with these benchmark cases and so tend to be more cautious than necessary about decision-making at the end of life
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Generally, legal precedent follows medical ethical principles in end-of-life care
- For instance, physicians are not required to provide treatment that would be ineffective
- Nor are physicians required to provide treatment when a patient with the capacity to make health care decisions (or an authorized health care agent) has refused such treatment
- In fact, it may be more legally perilous for a physician to continue to treat against patient or surrogate wishes
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