Dr Charles E. Binkley joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article: "How Should Surgeons Communicate About Palliative and Curative Intentions, Purposes, and Outcomes?"

Robert Ledbetter and Dr Buddy Marterre join Ethics Talk to discuss their article: “Where’s the Value in Preoperative Covenants Between Surgeons and Patients?”

Drs Pringl Miller, Preeti John, and Sabha Ganai join Ethics Talk to discuss their article: “How Should Surgical Palliative Success Be Defined?”

Drs Michael Young, Robert Regenhardt, and Leonard Sokol join Ethics Talk to discuss their article, coauthored with Dr Thabele Leslie-Mazwi: "When Should Neuroendovascular Care for Patients With Acute Stroke Be Palliative?"

No single person should make decisions about for whom or according to which criteria palliative surgery is clinically and ethically appropriate.

Differentiating between best palliative care options and the curative and palliative potential of surgery is key to developing dual intentional clarity.

A surgeon’s duty is to identify goals of care, including those about quality of life, from a patient’s perspective and to consider how to achieve them.

For some patients whose survival is extended by disease-modifying interventions, little guidance about clinical and ethical complexities exist.

Word usage and intentional clarity will influence how patients feel about that Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy surgery.

Calls to expand palliative care education have been explicit since the 1990s, but palliative care training in surgery remains too narrowly focused on end of life.