Moral and ethical principles in end of life care

In many areas of health care, and especially in such areas as palliative care, increasing attention has been paid in recent years to patient autonomy, and the need to respect it. Autonomy has come to be seen as a very important aspect of the interaction between patients and those looking after them, and forms the basis for many ethical commitments, such as telling the truth to patients, and seeking their consent for health care interventions. In this unit we look at quite a wide range of ethical issues. They all have one thing in common, however: autonomy. Each of them is a pressing ethical issue because of our concerns about how best to respect patient autonomy, and about whether it should be ignored or overridden in certain cases.