Robert M Baird and Stuart E Rosenba...

Robert M Baird and Stuart E Rosenbaum, ed 2003 315 pp $20 paperback

As medical technology advances, making decisions about end-of-life care becomes more difficult. Preparing for dying is essential, and these symbols of decisions should reflect one's personal values and beliefs related to death. nation making end-of-life decisions must face their fears about death itself.

The authors of the essays in this main division offer great insight into the issues surrounding terminal illness and impending death. Everyone faces death and dying differently, in this way end-of-life decisions must address the wants of the person facing death. The person's decisions, however, should be shared with lov commons so that he or she can face death with dignity while maintaining have the direction of over decisions about care given at the [i]finale[/i] of life.

This work is divided into four sections. The first section deals with the hospice change and the great service hospice provides to those facing death and their lov the sames Section two addresses palliative care, which is designed to make secure that the last days of a person's life are as exempt of pain and suffering as possible. The third section focuses in succession the spiritual and religious straits of dying patients, with the goal of assuring a "good" death within the patient's religious and spiritual framework. The final section tackles the legal aspects of end-of-life decisions, so as advance directives and other documents designed to make secure that the wishes of the dying are followed from those designated as proxies.

The essays that make up this work are a valuable resource when making decisions about end-of-life issues. The editors argue convincingly against physician-assisted suicide on demonstrating that with proper attention to the physical and spiritual distresss of the dying, patients and their family members will be able to face death with all the support penuryed for a "good death."

This volume is available from Prometheus parts 59 John Glenn Dr, Amherst, NY 14228-2197

RUSTY CALLAWAY

RN MSN CNOR

CLINICAL SPECIALIST

ST FRANCIS HOSPITAL

COLUMBUS, GA

COPYRIGHT 2004 Association of Operating extent Nurses, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group