Assumptions and Principles Underlying Standards for Care of the Termin

Assumptions And Principles Underlying Standards For Care of The Terminally Ill

Introduction

There is agreement that patients with life-threatening illnesses, including
progressive malignancies, need appropriate therapy and treatment throughout the
course of illness. At one stage, therapy is directed toward assessment and
intervention in order to control and/or to cure such illness and alleviate
associated symptoms. For some persons, however, the time comes when cure and
remission are beyond current medical expertise. It is then that the intervention
must shift to what is now often termed "palliative treatment," which is designed
to control pain in the broadest sense and provide personal support for patients
and family during the terminal phase of illness. In general, palliative care
requires limited use of apparatus and technology, extensive personal care, and
an ordering of the physical and social environment to be therapeutic in itself.

There are, as it were, two complementary systems of treatment which may often
overlap: One system is concerned with eliminating a curable disease and the
other with relieving the symptoms resulting from the relentless progress of an
incurable illness. There must be openness, interchange, and overlap between the
two systems so that the patient receives continuous appropriate care. The
patient should not be subjected to aggressive treatment that offers no hope of
being effective in curing or controlling the disease and may only cause further
distress. Obviously, the clinician must be on the alert for any shifts that may
occur in the course of a terminal illness, which make the patient again a
candidate for active treatment.

Patients suffer not only from inappropriate active care, but also from inept
terminal care. This is well documented by studies that only confirm what dying
patients and their families know at first hand.

These principles have been prepared as an aid to those who have initiated or are
planning programs for... [continues]

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