Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 1-2e/2020

Nutrition and hydration of terminally ill cancer patients

When we providing palliative care to cancer patients, we encounter several problems and ethical dilemmas that affect the patient and their family members. The most problems are related to nutrition and hydration. In this paper, we therefore focused on nutrition, hydration and the specificities of their application in the terminal stage of cancer. In the introduction we describe the arguments for and against nutrition and hydration in the terminal stage of the disease. We are dedicated to the most common ethical problems that healthcare workers face. The main part of the contribution consists of results of clinical research, which was carried out at the Department of Radiation and Clinical Oncology in the Military hospital in Ružomberok. We used qualitative and quantitative methods we found out which problems and ethical dilemmas nurses face in the application of nutrition and providing hydration to patients in the terminal stage of the disease. After evaluating the results, we found that the most problems are related to the administration or the decision not to administer artificial nutrition and hydration. The research was part of the KEGA project Possibilities of interdisciplinary cooperation in the implementation of non-pharmacological treatment in institutional facilities.

Keywords: nutrition, hydration, oncological diseases, terminal stage, ethical dilemmas, KEGA project