Ethical Dilemma in End-of-Life Care This paper will discuss the ethical dilemmas nurses face when caring for patients at end of life. Ethical dilemmas involve weighing personal values, beliefs and sense of right and wrong. Therefore, it is important for the nurse to examine their own personal values, beliefs and morals when faced with ethical dilemmas. End of life is referring to a person in which death cannot be prevented. This period can be hours, days, weeks, months in a person’s life, in which a terminal illness or condition has no cure and death is imminent. Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that has caused many ethical dilemmas with nurses and the medical field altogether. Nurses must develop an understanding of the ethical side of their nursing practice to properly provide support at the end of life.
Dilemma and Reflection Patients with a terminal disease usually experience a decline in functional
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In the case of a 78-year-old male patient with advanced dementia, the strategies that doctors and rehabilitation counselors may consider to deliver end-of-life care have a basis in decision-making processes capable of enhancing institutional supports received by his wife and any other close family members. Accordingly, an advance care model inspired by Family Systems Theory (FST) and the palliative care approach will encourage doctors and rehabilitation counselors to build trust with the patient's wife who previously played the role of a healthcare proxy. Largely because the patient is in a severe state of cognitive decline, an advance care model will improve how his wife assesses any proposed or existing end-of-life care interventions. Furthermore, the advance care model will mitigate the side effects of using a feeding tube to replenish