Seeming incongruity between surgery and palliation reiterates patients’ needs for clinicians to be able to identify when and how they should coexist.

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.

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.

Cervical cancer has become rare in high-income countries but is a leading cause of mortality among women in low- and middle-income countries. This inequity is an epidemiological tragedy.

To achieve health equity, governments can use a variety of tools, including civil rights legislation and constitutional jurisprudence.

Shared decision making is complex with patients who are adolescents, whose relational autonomy is still emerging.

Futility can function as a moral counterweight to a duty to treat, helping clinicians  find balance between over- and undertreatment. 

Some individuals with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa experience dramatically degraded quality of life in the face of refractory illness and compulsory treatment. 

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.