• Morana Brkljacić Zagrović.
• Katedra za drustvene i humanisticke znanosti u medicini, Medicinski fakultet Sveucilista u Rijeci, Rijeka, Hrvatska. morana.brkljacic@medri.hr
• Acta Med Croatica. 2010 Oct 1; 64 (4): 263-71.

AbstractPalliative medicine is a new branch of medicine dealing with optimal quality of life and death, and is primarily a medical area of interest. Palliative care is a care provided by interdisciplinary palliative team. Let us remember that palliative care is a specific form of medical care for patients in the terminal phase of life. It is an approach to improve the quality of life of patients faced with fatal diseases, and of their families. Palliative care starts when classic methods of treatment have been exhausted, or when the symptoms of a malignant disease reach a level that the patient can hardly endure. It encompasses three areas: alleviating the symptoms, giving psycho-sociological support to patients and their caregivers, and dealing with ethical problems concerning the end of life. Particularly important is the ethics of palliative care, because it is focused on the aspects of care aimed at the patient and critical decision-making. The decisions made in palliative medicine require moral, legal and medical judgments. At the same time, one must strike a balance between clinical aspects of care and the patient's autonomy regarding his wishes, beliefs, and finally decisions about his own medical treatment. Ethical aspects of decision-making cannot be separated from clinical circumstances in the individual case, in the same way as medical decision-making cannot neglect the four (bio)ethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy of the person, and justice.

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