Ethical Dilemmas Associated with End of Life Care

 “Integrating Care When the End is Near: Ethical Dilemmas in End-of-Life Care” written by Tziporah Rosenberg and Jenny Speice (2013) brings to light the hurdles associated with end of life care. End of life discussions are not easy to have with patients and their family members, and along with this, clinicians and other healthcare workers must be aware of the laws associated with interacting with patients and patients’ family members. Summary The above mentioned article is centered around Sheila, a 28-year-old African American female who seeks medical attention after being diagnosed with diabetes. Sheila quickly makes lifestyle changes at the recommendation of her physician and stabilizes her diabetes. Within a couple of weeks, she began to feel fatigued. Doctors could not explain what was causing Shelia’s fatigue. She progressively got worse and still no reason for her symptoms. Sheila’s physician consulted a behavioral health clinician (BHC) to help her cope with the sudden change in her condition and the depression she recently divulged she was experiencing. This article stresses the importance of a collaborative team while caring for patients in these types of situations, but in doing so the patient’s dignity, autonomy, the scope of practice, multiple relationships, and confidentiality, as well as record-keeping in the context of family-oriented integrated care must be taken into account (Rosenburg and Speice, 2013).