Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 1-2e/2018

Diagnosis and prognosis of fatal diseases: to communicate or to conceal? From the bed to the department

The information communicated in palliative care should be based on the patient‘s current health conditions and needs. Physician has to ask himself the following questions: What to say, how to tell, when to tell, to whom to communicate (or not to communicate)? The patient‘s good should be the priority when deciding. The aim of the contribution is to show the ethical and legal variants of the procedure to communicate information about diagnosis and prognosis of incurable patient. The basic method of this approach is to describe and compare the corresponding passages of ethical and legal norms in relation to qualitatively conceived case study.

Keywords: information, physicians, ethical norms, legal norms, acute medical condition, deontology, consequentialism