Palliative psychiatry can facilitate compassionate resolution of ethical conflicts in end-of-life care decision making with persons with substance use disorders.
This article examines conceptual limitations of extant accounts of palliative psychiatry, with a focus on obligations to distinguish among and clearly formulate goals of care.
Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
Protecting one’s moral integrity may require a conscience clause that protects positive conscience claims by permitting individuals to perform actions that are otherwise prohibited by legal or institutional rules.