基本説明
Examines the notion of 'natural death' in the highly technological health care setting, and explores how doctors and nurses strive to achieve this for dying people and their families.
Full Description
The development of the intensive care unit stands as an expression of a post war medical revolution in which the means have become available to deflect and defer death almost indefinitely. Here, cultural expectations of medical heroism are conjoined with images of the most exacting and precise application of medical science. However, the use of an arsenal of scientific and technological advances to try and pull dying people back from the very brink of death has, it might be argued, leapt ahead of our ability to deal with the professional, social, ethical and financial consequences thrown up by its use. This book explores how the withdrawal of active medical treatment is managed in intensive care units, placing this in the context of detailed patient case studies. It examines, in particular, the notion of 'natural death' in this highly technological health care setting, and explores how doctors and nurses strive to achieve this for dying people and their families. It draws extensively on the experiences of patients' families, doctors and nurses, using interview and observational data. It is a timely account of the practical, ethical and emotional difficulties of end of life care in this complex setting.
The book will be of interest to nurses working with dying people in acute hospital environments, to those engaged in the sociology of death and dying, and in the conduct of ethnographic research in this field.
Contents
Series editor's preface
Uncertain deaths
critical care and the modern hospital
A methodological note
Medical knowledge in intensive care
constructing prognostic certainty
Critical care
negotiating medicine and nursing
A primary need examined
the disclosure of information to patients' companions
Withdrawing medical treatment in intensive care
the problem of 'natural death'
'Nursing care only'
The 'good death' in intensive care
a matter of integrity
Conclusion
Glossary
References
Index.
