| Description | Physicians and advanced practitioners have the privilege and duty to care for patients at the end of life. Sometimes their actions—including discontinuing life-support (including ventilators, cardiac devices, and dialysis), clinically supporting patients who voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED), providing palliative sedation, and, in states where it is legal, prescribing a lethal dose of medication to a dying patient—factor into a patient’s death. These cases have clinical, legal, ethical, sociocultural, spiritual, and psychological dimensions that are often challenging for physicians and advanced practitioners to navigate. This conference will set the stage for ongoing discussion of these practices and the issues physicians and advanced practitioners caring for dying patients often face, as both medical technology and patients’ requests for planned death evolve. |
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