-
Support Care Cancer · Jul 2001
Case ReportsEthical decision-making on communication in palliative cancer care: a personalist approach.
- P Taboada and E Bruera.
- Center for Bioethics, P. Catholic University of Chile, Santiago de los Caballeros.
- Support Care Cancer. 2001 Jul 1; 9 (5): 335-43.
AbstractPerhaps one of the main ethical dilemmas physicians face in cancer medicine is the question of truthfulness with terminally ill cancer patients. Reluctance to share the truth with the patient about his or her diagnosis and/or prognosis is frequently associated with cultural pressures. Based on two cases, the authors illustrate how ethical analysis can help in solving dilemmas related to truth disclosure to terminally ill cancer patients and their families. A personalist approach reveals that the often-adduced conflict between nonmaleficence/beneficence and autonomy with regard to truth telling originates from a narrow understanding of the concept of autonomy. This confrontation is, therefore, more apparent than real. A brief review of the main ethical systems and the results of their application to clinical decision-making follow the discussion of the cases.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..