2013, Number 2
Quality of life and human dignity in terminal patients: options for a good death
Mendoza LI, Pichardo GLMG
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 10
Page: 112-115
PDF size: 72.86 Kb.
ABSTRACT
The terminal patient, «incurable patient in a situation of reasonable failure to respond to treatment, with the presence of several problems or severe symptoms, multiple, and changing multifactorial, with great emotional impact, which also affects the family and the treatment team and prognosis is less to six months» (SECPAL, Sociedad de Cuidados Paliativos), is now closer than ever to fall into a misunderstood dignified death with the pretext of maintaining the quality of life. It is essential to clarify concepts in a new era of medicine, with all the technological advances that exist today to prolong the patient’s life. It is essential to define and limit the need to apply a treatment without favorable prognosis and does nothing to make death a natural event as smooth as possible. It has been called therapeutic obstinacy that treatment which wants to do technically as necessary to keep a person alive, even though his condition has recommended removing the therapeutic effort. In some cases medical reasons can become decisive, from inexperience, not wanting to accept failure in the care of a patient. Among the family can be a tendency to cling to life, rejecting death as an event unknown and which do not want to face. This effort is a false pretense, an option where there is desperate to avoid falling. Neither the doctor nor the patient can be found in more than a futile treatments elongation complex artificial over the end, instead of softening the trance. Neither the patients nor their close relatives who serve as primary caregivers gain nothing by going to «do everything possible» when really nothing you may do that do damage the dignity of the patient in some way or worse, go only for the benefit of revenues doctor or the hospital and as a tough cost to the family. The option is to understand when the quality of life is over and you should go to accompany and help cross the threshold of the end of life with dignity, with a meaning, give it a natural course of death, respecting the core values you want to give every man in that time to give it sense. Agree assess whether it should be brought to your home, without the latest in bio-technology, not just a quality of life seeking material or technique, which can be very poor in dimensions for this single moment in a life full of experiences insurmountable and that comes to an end, but preparing a time when every person can take that step uniquely, as demand respect for their identity and their dignity as a human being.REFERENCES
“La percepción que un individuo tiene de su lugar en la existencia, en el contexto de la cultura y del sistema de valores en los que vive y en relación con sus objetivos, sus expectativas, sus normas y sus inquietudes” OMS, 30-0ctubre-2011. Disponible en: Enciclopedia. us.es. Consultada el día 06 de febrero de 2013.