Category / End of Life Ethics
-
Advocating for the Dying – The View of Family and Friends
Advocating for the Dying – The View of Family and Friends Imagine you are being forced to play a game. You don’t know the rules. People playing the game with you know the rules but don’t bother to explain them. They can be changed at any time, depending on who is in charge. Some…
-
Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Different Approach
Physician Assisted Suicide – A Different Approach More requests for physician-assisted suicide are not due to present suffering. Steps must be designed to uncover the real roots of the desire so that they can be specifically addressed. Examples of such steps are proposed.
-
![]()
The Case of Melinda and Matt: Ethical Indicators of Futility in Critically Ill New Mother
Who is responsible for healthcare decisions of this 31-year-old African American woman? Should her advance directive be honored?
-
![]()
The Case of Jennie M: To Tube Feed or Not
Jennie has an advance directive which does not address artificial nutrition. Who makes this decision now that Jennie can’t speak for herself?
-
The Case of Jesse, Unrepresented and Homeless
A 60-year-old homeless man, “Jesse,” is found confused and in distress by a passerby who calls 911. Paramedics bring the man to the hospital. Jesse’s feet and legs are swollen and covered in ulcers and dead tissue—diagnosed as osteomyelitis, or infection of his legs.
-
The Case of Joe
“Joe” is a 62-year-old building contractor who has been in an ICU for the past 10 weeks. He had gone to his community hospital for bypass surgery (CABG) and aortic valve repair (AVR), and things didn’t go well post-op. His sternal wound became infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
-
The Case of Sepsis in a Newborn
The “Clinical Moment” in Short Bowel Syndrome: What Can We Do, What Should We Do?
-
The Case of Pat: Unprepared to Talk About Dying
Pat B. had never talked with her father about dying. Even when he was older and had remarried after her mother’s death, there seemed no opportunity conducive for such a talk.
-
The Case of Nancy Cruzan
A thirty-year-old accident victim suffered lack of oxygen to her brain for six to twenty minutes. She was in a persistently comatose and vegetative state, sustained by a gastronomy feeding tube, although her respiration and circulation were normal. The opinion of medical professionals was that she could live thirty-years. She now lies in a Missouri state hospital at the state’s expense.
-
After the Heart Attack – Sister Rosemary Flanigan, PhD
In early 2012, at age 85, Dr. Rosemary Flanigan suffered and survived a heart attack. Fifteen years earlier, Dr. Flanigan wrote: “It makes me mad…
