ETHICAL AND BIOETHICAL ASPECTS IN PALLIATIVE CARE

Abstract

Abstract: Palliative care represents the shared choice, between the health professional and the patient, to preserve the patient’s dignity when drug therapy and surgical interventions are not beneficial to health care. This perspective of medical follow-up rescues the ethical care of attention and appreciation of the person’s biography. The ethical aspect, based on the ethics of care and deontological ethics, reflects on the relationship between health professionals and patients with the aim of offering conditions for maintaining autonomy and dignity. Bioethics emphasizes care centered on patient choices. It avoids obstinacy in prolonging medical treatment unless there is an improvement in the patient’s clinical con­dition. This conceptual dialectic between ethics and bioethics has the purpose of guaranteeing the well-being of patients in palliative care.­

Keywords: Palliative care. Ethics. Bioethics. Care Ethics. Deontological Ethics.