Ethics and Spiritual Care at the End of Life
University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine
In our increasingly complex medical system, physicians and other healthcare providers, as well as patients and their family members, often face difficult decisions regarding end-of-life care. In addition to being emotionally challenging, such decisions involve complex ethical considerations. Furthermore, physicians are increasingly recognizing the importance of spiritual care at all stages of treatment, but particularly when patients are facing death. For many patients, spiritual and religious beliefs and convictions play an important role in addressing end-of-life issues and informing ethically difficult decisions. This symposium will bring together physicians, healthcare providers, chaplains and spiritual care providers, and interested members of the community to examine key themes in both clinical ethics and spiritual care at the end-of-life.
- Gain knowledge of relevant ethical principles regarding end-of-life treatment decisions (e.g., understanding distinctions between ordinary/proportionate and extraordinary/disproportionate health care interventions.).
- Physicians will appreciate the trends in this medical literature as it applies to their own clinical practice, and make recommendations accordingly.
- Physicians will become more adept at discussing spiritual issues with a patient in a clinical context.
- Physicians will understand the need for a spiritual history, and gain practical tools to use in gathering this history in a clinical setting with their elderly patients.
- Physicians and other health professionals will enhance their cultural competence by including religious and spiritual dimensions in their consideration of cultural factors that affect and influence patients' experience of illness and medical decision making.