Nursing ethics in palliative care

Abstract

Increased life expectancy, a growing ageing population and an increase in the number of terminally ill patients require the development and improvement of palliative care. Informing and educating people about their right to end-of-life care is fundamental to developing and exercising this right. However, the complexity of multifaceted symptoms in palliative patients addresses biomedical, social, psychological, ethical and organisational aspects that constitute an imperative dilemma for health professionals. Educating and training health professionals in palliative care is the key, together with governmental policies to deal ethically with death and bereavement. In addition to technical skills, nurses need to have human skills, including empathy and an ability to accompany patients and their families at an optimal distance. The aim of this thesis is to provide ethical knowledge to health professionals facing ethically conflicting situations in clinical practice. This thesis will be implemented as a practice-based thesis.To achieve this, educational material on ethics in palliative care will be presented in power point format to healthcare professionals, in order to promote nursing ethics in palliative care and raise awareness of ethical problems that use to arise in clinical practice.