CONTINOUS DEEP PALLIATIVE SEDATION: AN ETHICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

In giving an ethical defence of this position, this thesis addresses a number of key considerations: the professional obligation to relieve suffering and the ethical justification for holistic palliative treatment of intractable suffering including existential suffering; the issues surrounding treatment without consent when many patients being considered for sedation at the end of life lack the capacity to authorize such treatments; justifying best interests decision-making that extends beyond the physician-patient dyad; the ethics of appropriateness and proportionality of response given its centrality to the employment of this treatment, and its related monitoring and safety precautions; and the need for an account of personhood to distance this treatment from euthanasia. Clarification of these facets will serve to set CDPS as a distinct and acceptable practice of last resort within the armamentarium of palliative care.