End of Life
Jane is a 57-year old African-American women who was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer 2 months ago. At this advanced stage, the disease is largely considered terminal. This is more so the case given that following review, doctors indicated that the said disease could not be cured and, thus, there was no need to put the patient on any aggressive or advanced treatment with the end goal being to cure the disease. Towards this end, a decision was made to put Jane on treatment to control her symptoms. More specifically, it was recommended that Jane undergoes radiation therapy with the specific aim of not only controlling her symptoms, but also stopping bleeding and easing pain. Janes family has been very supportive so far. She is married to Jordan, a 64-year-old veteran. Together, they have 3 children who are all adults and married.
Over the last two weeks, Jane has been showing signs of distress and anxiety. She indicates that she wants to leave this planet as soon as possible so as to ease her familys suffering and release them to pursue other more meaningful engagements in life. She is concerned that they are unnecessarily spending resources on her and is convinced that she is wasting their time on constant visitations and in terms of the various demands of care. She sees the stoppage of treatment as the only way...
…indicated elsewhere in this text, doctors have ruled out the need to deploy interventions aimed at curing the disease. Towards this end, the relevance of palliative care cannot be overstated. Thus, Jane ought to be placed on palliative treatment for cancer whereby the goal happens to be improving her overall quality of life and deploy various interventions and strategies to minimize suffering (Saracino, Rosenfeld, Breibart, and Chochinov, 2019). There would be need to ensure that Jane and her family members are aware of the need and relevance of palliative care. In this case, sensitivity would be paramount i.e. in relation to respecting the familys viewpoints and opinions. However, there would be need to ensure that a straightforward and honest tone…
References
Conte, C. (2009). Advanced Techniques for Counseling and Psychotherapy. Springer Publishing Company.
Davey, P., Rathmell, A. & Dunn, M. (2016). Medical Ethics, Law and Communication at a Glance. John Wiley & Sons.
Saracino, R.M., Rosenfeld, B., Breibart, W. & Chochinov, H.M. (2019). Psychotherapy at the End of Life. Am J Bioeth., 19(12), 19-28.
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