ADULT AND PALLIATIVE CARE AND ETHICS OF END OF LIFE CARE
'Threats which are no less serious hang over the incurably ill and the dying. In a social and cultural context which makes it more difficult to face and accept suffering, the temptation becomes all the greater to resolve the problem of suffering by eliminating it at the root, by hastening death so that it occurs at the moment considered most suitable................... there exists in contemporary culture a certain Promethean attitude which leads people to think that they can control life and death by taking the decisions about them into their own hands. What really happens in this case is that the individual is overcome and crushed by a death deprived of any prospect of meaning or hope. We see a tragic expression of all this in the spread of euthanasia-disguised and surreptitious, or practised openly and even legally.'
Praise the Lord all people for his mercy is bestowed upon us and his truth remains forever.(from Psalm 116(117) )-click image for LaudateDominum fromlimburger-domsingknaben
Details of courses on palliative care can be found on the ST MARY'S HOSPICE website link below and OPEN UNIVERSITY website on our links page.Details of spiritual courses can be found on the MARYVALE INSTITUTE website on our links page.
'No one truly envisages this loss until it has become their own personal experience.It is the pain of the heart and the mind, and very often physical pain too.We become wounded people, vulnerable to so many other unsuspected hurts and difficulties.Chasms of despair can open up before us, suddenly and without any warning.We, who were competent and balanced people can teeter on the brink,stunned by our own inadequacy'
Extract from When The Corn is Ripe Angela Blakey, Veritas Publications1993 p.129.
'Palliative care is the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Control of pain, of other symptoms, and of psychological and spiritual problems is paramount'
National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services 1997.
Courses for those working with the dying and the bereaved are listed on the ST MARY'S HOSPICE LINK ABOVE and OPEN UNIVERSITY AND MARYVALE WEBSITES on our links page.
'Our Western Society is inclined to regard death as a problem to be solved, a technical failure one day to be overcome. The Christian approaches death as a mysterium , a mystery to be entered into, a point of unity with Christ in His death and resurrection.It is true that death involves corruption and decay of the body.It exhibits the incomprehensibility of evil in its starkest form here on earth -especially when it strikes at those in the prime of life' Marsden,F,Fr ,(1998)Medical Ethics,Birmingham,Maryvale Institute,p.135
'The question is not whether we human beings want to deal with the spiritual world, any more than it is whether we want to deal with the physical world....Perhaps the only thing more dangerous than dealing with spiritual reality is not dealing with it'
Morton Kelsey (1982) Christopsychology p33.
DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF
'the term disenfranchised grief has been used to describe unacknowledged grief....
Unrecognized relationships ' (not immediate close family members)
'Unrecognized losses (e.g. perinatal deaths, abortions,returning foster children to their parents,giving up children for adoption,loss of a pet,and social or psychological loss without death' (e.g.Alzheimers Disease)
'Unrecognized grievers (e.g. children who are thought to be too young to grieve ,or adults who are too old or brain damaged'
Taken from Bereavement :Private Grief and Collective Reposonsibility (1992) Milton Keynes,Open University
WORKING LOCALLY,NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY WITH OTHER FAITH BACKGROUNDS
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Adult and Elderly Care,Palliative Care,Coping with Death and Bereavement, Bioethical Issues.
'Life is frail:It will end if one lacks air to breathe or food to eat, or if the bodyis either too hot or too cold.Death is unpredictable as to the age at which one may die, at what time of day, of what and where.One may only live another day'
Harvey cited in Neuberger and White (1991) A Necessary End:Attitudes to death,Macmillan,London,1991.
WORKING WITH ADULT AND ELDERLY CARE
THE HOLISTIC APPROACH
'Holism emphasizes that a continued harmonious interaction between the innermost core spirit, the mind and the body,is required to maintain an individual's health(Narayanasamy,1999). Martin (1989)agrees, suggesting that there is a growing interest in an holistic model of reality emphasizing that holistic medicine ... must address all three aspects of the person , psyche, soma and spirit .... It is acknowledged that the approach to death, the onset of a terminal illness and old age may lead an individual to intensify their search for meaning. However, if spirituality is an all pervasive part of humanity, then nurses need to provide spiritual care to all clients, no matter what their clinical condition, age or their proximity to death'
Extracts from Spiritual Nursing Care of Older Adults,by Sr Caroline Kissane BSc(Hons),RN,ENB931, Little Sisters of the Poor.
Martin (1989)cited in Brenner, P. and Carson,V.Spiritual Dimensions of Nursing Practice,London,Saunders,pp.115-117. Narayanasamy,A.(1999)'A review of spirituality as applied to nursing' International Journal of Nursing Studies,36,pp.117-125
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'For man the right to live is the fundamental right.And yet, a part of contemporary culture has wanted to deny that right, turning it into an uncomfortable right, one that has to be defended.But there is no other right that so closely affects the very existence of the person ! The right to life means the right to be born and then continue until one's natural end.'
WORKING WITH OTHER CATHOLIC AND OTHER CHRISTIAN AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ON BIOETHICAL ISSUES
ON EUTHANASIA
' a key issue for the 21st century and one that all of society must engage in.The priority must be to protect the weak, sick and vulnerable... the current RCN position reflects the legal position as it stands at the moment.The RCN has to ensure that its policy positions reflect current law, because if nurses step outside the law, then they are at risk of criminal prosecution.
Extract from an article on euthanasia by Maura Buchanan,RCN Ethics Bulletin,Winter 2003/04.
