The Ambiguity of Clinical Intentions

In summary, multilayered intentions are present in most, if not all,-of-life decisions. To understand physicians' reluctance to stop-sustaining treatment once it is started, or to prescribe adequate amounts narcotics to patients who are dying and in severe pain, we would do well to beneath the idealized, sanitized intentions espoused by many medical to the actual experience of doctors and patients. If we do not the ethical and legal status of such actions as prescribing to terminally ill patients, with their inherent complexities and, then most physicians will remain too fearful to help patients these delicate deliberations. If we do not acknowledge the inescapable of intentions in most double-effect situations, physicians may from aggressive palliative treatment out of fear of crossing the bright line between allowing patients to die and causing their. Our current ethical thinking and legal prohibitions reinforce-deception, secrecy, isolation, and abandonment at a time when the exact is needed. Perhaps a key to humanizing medical ethics and the law, as as clinical medicine, lies in being more forthright and explicit about intentions and responsibilities in working with dying patients.