Specialized Nutritional Support and its Ethical Issues

Abstract

The chronic condition of some pathology may lead the patient to a critical condition or even to an end-stage, putting the multidisciplinary group in an ethical conflict; as well as the family. Considering that the objective of healthcare staff has always been the well-being through prevention and correction of the clinical condition, avoiding, at all times, to relief pain and suffer, now having to address the therapeutic help to a “good death” of the patient. The cultural conditions have changed and death is not perceived the same way it used to be, nor by the society nor the group providing attention and care to the critical or end-stage patient, generating expectations for each case, separating the patient from reason and reality (1). Today, science has had a technological advance having a direct impact on the vital function of the patient, having a direct influence on the time, but mainly on the way of death, focusing the attention on the possible decisions of the seriously sick patient, starting the era of an “assisted death”, as opposed to a natural death (1,2).