A Zócalo/UCLA Event
Modern medicine is helping us live longer—but it’s also making our deaths longer and more complicated. The end of life involves so many competing voices—doctors, nurses, lab technicians, family members, friends, pastors, even lawyers—that dying requires considerable negotiation and the resolution of conflicting ethics. How can the dying, their families, and their health care providers best make decisions? How much responsibility should doctors and nurses bear in such situations? How do we resolve ethical conflicts when a dying person can no longer make decisions for themselves, or when their wishes are unknown? UCLA Ethics Center co-founder Katherine Brown-Saltzman, Dr. Susan Stone of St. Joseph Health & Annadel Medical Group, UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital Palliative Care Chaplain Rev. Lori Koutouratsas, and Bill Monning, CA Senator and co-author of the End of Life Option Act visit Zócalo to explore the ethical challenges of end of life care.
Photo courtesy of Photographee.eu.
The Takeaway
In Medicine, Dying Doesn’t Have to Be a Struggle
Options, Not Treatment, May Be What’s Most Needed at the End of Life
Grandma’s dying. She lived a full life, but illness is getting the best of her. Could be days, could be weeks, the doctors say—unless, that is, she tries one particular …