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Ethical conflicts over verbal statements regarding last wishes

Abstract:

Within our socio-professional framework, there are few occasions in which there is sincere communication between health care teams and patients and their families that allows questions to be raised about decisions made during the process of an illness i.e., whether an intervention, or its omission in certain cases, would be accepted. Decisions regarding representation or living wills are merely an extension of the inclusion of the patients' moral autonomy in clinical decision making. Nevertheless, the best way to make patients' rights effective is not by focussing on these documents, but rather by achieving the development of integral processes that promote patient participation and decision making. On the basis of a discussion in which a number of ethical conflicts that concern patients' last wishes are intertwined, we present the following clinical case that allows reflection on the most effective kind of intervention, the nature of its duration and intensity and the way health care professionals must be faithful to patients' and families' desires and expressions in these cases. © 2010 Elsevier España, S.L.