Death and Dying
Use case examples from the module or your experience to discuss three ethical choices that might arise when providing end-of-life care to children.
Introduction to my essay
In this essay I have been asked to discuss three ethical choices that might arise when providing end of life care to children. End-of-life care is also known as palliative care and it is the care that is given to someone who is terminally ill and dying. Palliative care, as defined by the Department of Health (200b), is the holistic, individualised care of someone who has been diagnosed with an incurable or life-limiting illness. (The Open University 2009). Here in the UK the NHS is responsible for people’s health and palliative care has been a medical speciality since the early 1980s and it is commonly seen as the founder of modern palliative care and exemplar of good practice. (The Open University, 2009). It is crucial with palliative care that the standard of care is high because there are no second chances to get it right. In the House of Commons Health Committee (2004) on palliative care it was recommended that an urgent review of the training in palliative care to be part of the training for all health care staff. This has meant that more staff are training and the standards of care are higher.
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy is the study of right conduct and good character. There are two different approaches to ethics, one is a person’s actions and the other is the character of the person. Although both ethics and the law deal with ‘right conduct’ they are not the same thing. To take an example of this, it is legal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy and have an abortion but there are a lot of people who think this is ethically wrong.
We all make ethical choices throughout our lives. These may not necessarily be big medical choices but day-to-day choices for example our diet and if we choose to eat meat. Peter Singer is a moral philosopher who has written
Introduction to my essay
In this essay I have been asked to discuss three ethical choices that might arise when providing end of life care to children. End-of-life care is also known as palliative care and it is the care that is given to someone who is terminally ill and dying. Palliative care, as defined by the Department of Health (200b), is the holistic, individualised care of someone who has been diagnosed with an incurable or life-limiting illness. (The Open University 2009). Here in the UK the NHS is responsible for people’s health and palliative care has been a medical speciality since the early 1980s and it is commonly seen as the founder of modern palliative care and exemplar of good practice. (The Open University, 2009). It is crucial with palliative care that the standard of care is high because there are no second chances to get it right. In the House of Commons Health Committee (2004) on palliative care it was recommended that an urgent review of the training in palliative care to be part of the training for all health care staff. This has meant that more staff are training and the standards of care are higher.
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy is the study of right conduct and good character. There are two different approaches to ethics, one is a person’s actions and the other is the character of the person. Although both ethics and the law deal with ‘right conduct’ they are not the same thing. To take an example of this, it is legal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy and have an abortion but there are a lot of people who think this is ethically wrong.
We all make ethical choices throughout our lives. These may not necessarily be big medical choices but day-to-day choices for example our diet and if we choose to eat meat. Peter Singer is a moral philosopher who has written
References: (www.rch.org.au/rch_palliative/prof/index.cfm?doc_id=1682) The Open University, K260 Death and Dying, Block 4, The Ethical Context of Death and Dying, Unit 5, page 103