Ethics in Palliative
Medicine
Tetsuro Shimizu
Faculty of Arts and Letters,
Kawauchi, Aoba-ku,
In
this session we were concerned with ethical issues that are involved in
Palliative Medicine. Before the
three speakers' presentations, Professor Stephen C. Schimpff, a chairperson of
the session, gave introductory remarks.
He discussed Palliative
Medicine as an exemplar of the new paradigm for medicine, i.e. holistic care,
in comparison with the curative model that has been predominant. The significant difference between the
two models lies in the value to which each model assigns priority, i.e.,
curative attitude of combatting disease vs. holistic medicine's care for the
patient as a human being, etc. On
the basis of Dr. Schimpff's presentation, we can also recognize how research
into the ethical aspects of palliative medicine is related to its conception
with respect to the new paradigm, for the change of priority of values results
in a certain shift of ethical judgements as well.
The first speaker, Dr. Geert H.
Blijham, reported the basic facts concerning euthanasia and physician-assisted
suicide in the
The second speaker, Dr. Asato
Fukaura, reported the introduction of a standardized do-not- resuscitate order
form at his university hospital and its effectiveness in lessening the cases of
futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation in patients dying of lung cancer. He concluded that the introduction of
do-not-resuscitate order forms and personal medical directives are useful for
the patient's interest. A
participant commented that the notification of disease, which the patient needs
for being able to give do-not-resuscitate order appropriately, does not seem
sufficient. Then, physicians' and families' negative attitudes towards the
notification in Japan became the subject of discussion, including the claim
that the average rate of notification of cancer must be much higher in
many Japanese hospitals today than
the speaker's data suggests is the case for his hospital. Nevertheless, the report remains
significant in that it represents a model of efforts to promote the new
paradigm of medicine in hospitals where the curative model is still
predominant.
The last speaker, Dr. Atsushi
Asai, reported the extent to which, among Japanese physicians, the patient's
wishes, including advance directives, are taken into consideration in medical
decisions concerning the end of life.
He showed that the main reason for following advance directives is the
patients' right to determine their own medical care, while the main reason for
overriding them is the family's wishes to prolong life, which seemed to be one of the
biggest barriers to implementing a competent patient's advance directives
towards the end of life. Concerning
the report it was discussed that the family's influence in medical decisions in
Japan seems to be somewhat different from that in western countries, but beyond
the cultural difference the patient's self-determination, and not the family's
will, should have priority. In
order to avoid misunderstanding, it should be noted that also the family, which
is involved in the palliative medicine, should be appropriately cared for with
respect to the quality of life, and again the patient's good relationship with
the family improves the patient's quality of life, so that it is better if the
family can be brought to agree with the patient, and the medical staff has to
try to bring about harmony between them.
Nevertheless, it never means that they are allowed to prioritize the
family's will over the patient's own will.
Through the three reports along
with the introductory remarks and discussions, the central points of the
ethical issues in palliative medicine became apparent. Dr. Schimpff concluded that the
physician has to have a truthful relationship with patients and to recognize
their personal autonomy, so that the physician has to ask them what their needs
are and not to put the physician's own values or beliefs over those of the
patients. Those conclusions are
consistent with the concept of the holistic approach to medical care he
referred to in his introductory remarks.
What I would like to have added to
the conclusions is as follows.
There are two main aspects of ethical issues; first, the choice of value
among diverse values, which are sometimes incompatible with each other, and,
secondly, the process of decision making, which consists mainly of the choice
of value. Euthanasia is thought, at
least by people with a positive attitude towards it, to be the choice of death
which is more valuable in some cases than a life of suffering, and the choice
will never be granted if not based on the patient's autonomous determination.
Do-not-resuscitate orders as well as advance directives concern the process of
decision making in terms of the patient's self- determination, by which the
patient determines the priority among diverse values.
Thus the first aspect concerns the
goodness that is aimed at by the
chosen medical activities, while the second aspect has to do with the goodness in the process of choosing medical
activities. The former goodness should be chosen by the patient, and the latter
lies only in the fact that the patient autonomously chooses the former. Consequently the medical staff should support
the competent patient being able to make autonomous decisions through trustful
communication with the patient (and with the family as well) and should agree
with the patient's choice that the medical staff recognizes as reasonable and
consistent. This implies the
process of shared decision making and is one of the most important ethical
prescriptions to the medical staff.
As to the case of the patient's incompetency, an ethical prescription
could be that the medical staff as well as the family should behave as
advocates of the patient, but there was not enough discussion in the present
session to examine it in detail.
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