Publication
The Limits of "Life-Limiting"
Macauley R · Journal of Pain & Symptom Management · 2019
The field of hospice and palliative medicine has struggled to define the conditions that are appropriate for palliative care. "Life-threatening" appropriately encompasses lethal conditions and helpfully incorporates the concept of probability, which is a necessary variable in any risk calculation. Yet it leaves one important group of patients unaccounted for: those whose primary need for palliative care is not expected abbreviation of life but rather the quality of that life. In an attempt to include these patients, the term "life-limiting" has come to be used more frequently. Although attractive in its breadth-and at first glance appearing to be a less threatening way to introduce palliative care-the term is inherently flawed. It denotes a certain outcome, without any consideration of the likelihood of that outcome. Rather than "softening the blow" of introducing palliative care, the term seems to condemn a patient to the very outcome that palliative care is tasked to ameliorate, namely, the limitation of life. As such, it may provide a distorted view of what palliative care is, especially in pediatrics where the term is used with disproportionate frequency. The inherent misplaced certainty of "life-limiting" and the self-defeating message it sends to patients should be acknowledged.
Synced from the TRENDS in Pediatric Palliative Care Zotero library, curated by The Siden Research Team. ICPCN does not host or verify the full text.